From the Ashes
by Bluefire Eternal
Summary: Once it was whispered Selena was a witch's child. Her mother was nothing so human. Eragon shares their spark. Desperate dreams lead him and Saphira to search out his family's secrets. But the past is far from dead, and it drags them into a war old as creation. Can Eragon shoulder his family's burdens and lift them from their ashes, or will they burn him from the inside out?
1. Prologue: The Spark

**The basic plot of this story has been eating away at my brain for ten years. Its earliest drafts are scrawled in my old middle school journals. Less than a week away from moving to a different continent, when I should be focused on everything but fic writing, I finally feel the uncontrollable urge to post this sucker XD**

 **This story is a post-Eldest AU.**

"Pacin' went make the babe come any faster, lad."

Cadoc steadfastly ignored his father, hunched over in his rocking chair and puffing away at his pipe. Garrow, red-faced and squalling, only quieted with constant motion. All Cadoc could do was walk back and forth, rocking his newborn gently in his arms, and softly murmur whatever prayers and nonsense words came to him.

Nothing could dampen the sounds of his wife's agony. Beline ranted, raved, and shrieked curses in that strange, guttural language of hers.

Those old-timers who claimed twins were twice the blessing had never endured a twin that refused to be born. Hours ago Garrow had slipped into the world with little fuss. Now the night air was too cold to take him outside and escape from his mother's screams.

Then again, when rumor spread around Carvahall that Beline was likely pregnant with twins, there had been only tight smiles and dark looks exchanged when they thought Cadoc's back was turned. Quite a few villagers already whispered he should have let Beline, nude and burning with fever, on the side of the ditch to die.

Cadoc's murmurs faltered when his wife let out one last scream so deep it was almost a roar. A baby's loud, angry cry followed.

Not long after his mother emerged from the room, smiling wearily. Gertrude, Carvahall's young healer, followed behind her and only looked glad the ordeal was over.

"Mother and child are both healthy," she reported wearily.

"It's a girl, Cadoc," Annah said triumphantly, taking her newborn grandson from his arms. "Already promising to be as beautiful as her mother."

Gavin muttered darkly that was all his granddaughter better have inherited from her. Cadoc was too relieved to argue. His father's complaints against Beline were nothing new.

He entered their bedroom to discover his wife already sitting up and nursing. She crooned a lullaby so softly Cadoc could barely hear her. They were not words he understood. The babe suckled at her right breast, as far away from the angry red scar tissue above her mother's heart as possible.

Beline's skin was even paler than usual and her pale hair a sweat-slicked mess. Her blue-gray eyes radiated love, pride, grief, and emotions Cadoc could only guess at. The lullaby on her lips died. She did not look up at him, even when he went to side and placed a tender kiss upon her brow.

"She is beautiful, Beline."

After a long moment Beline pulled their daughter from her breast and presented her to him. While Garrow had screamed bloody murder every time he sucked the cloth dry of goat's milk, his sister did not whimper once. Gently Cadoc took the babe into his arms. He loved Garrow, but gods bless him, the boy's red and squashed face was not a pretty sight. Annah assured him time would fatten the boy up into a proper babe. Already his sister was lovely, with delicate features and a fine head of light brown hair. Garrow's eyes were indefinite infant blue, their color not yet set. The eyes that blinked up at Cadoc were already Beline's bright blue-gray and seemed to look right through him.

"Her name is Selena."

Cadoc flinched. Garrow was a good, strong name, the name of his own grandfather. 'Selena' sounded pretty enough, but he disliked how... alien his wife's sibilant tongue pronounced it. It was far too grandiose for a farmer's daughter.

"We could name her Lara, for my mother's mother," he suggested tentatively. Beline and Gavin hated each other so much he did not even offer up the name of his other grandmother.

Beline's lip twitched. When she had first come to them she had sneered and snarled at whatever had given her displeasure. "Her name is Selena."

"But-"

"Garrow is your heir, is he not?" she snapped. "Can you not let me have my daughter?"

Cadoc reeled back at the force of her outburst. In his arms his daughter began to cry. Gently he returned her to her mother's embrace.

Beline had been with his family for three years, and his wife for two. He still knew nothing about her past, for over and over she repeated only that she had deserved whatever hand the gods saw fit to deal her. That included being left for dead in a ditch, perhaps forsaken in the wilderness weeks before. When he had first stumbled across her nude and bleeding body, he had thought her dead. Then he had touched her shoulder and found her burning with fever, hotter than he ever knew someone could be.

Eventually he and Annah had both secretly concluded Beline to be a noble's daughter forsaken by her family. It explained her elegant if exotic appearance and her proud way of carrying herself. There were certainly isolated cities in the Empire with strange customs, Kuasta among them. Surely some must have had their own peculiar languages too. Perhaps Selena was a family name.

Neither he nor his mother dared speculate on how Beline had acquired her scars. Or the stretch-marks that had marred her belly since he'd found her naked, delusional, and at death's door. Gavin's dark mutterings about witchcraft and enchantment weren't tolerated in their household. No matter how... odd his wife could be at times, she never turned her nose up at hard work and had never done him or his parents harm.

"They are both our children, Beline," he said quietly. "Garrow is as much your son as... Selena is my daughter."

Beline said nothing. Only years later would he realize how wrong he'd been.

* * *

Selena may have only been seven years old, but she knew quite a bit about the gods. Her grandmother insisted on her learning countless names and rituals, how to appease them and how to avoid offending them through leaving little gifts buried in the fields or tucked behind the barn. Her grandfather flatly insisted gods did not exist. Her father only remembered what he saw as the 'important things,' like the prayers for fertile fields and bountiful harvests. Garrow was much too busy with chores and his stupid friends in the village to have any real thoughts on the matter.

Mother's gods had strange names like Taliv Mahed and Ahd Ahed. They were secret gods, like the nonsense words she sometimes spoke, meant only for herself and Selena.

Mother called the moon Tria Luan, but to Selena he was the Lord Moon. When he was wide awake, and his eye opened fully, Selena and her mother were awake with him. They had the whole night to themselves once everyone else had gone to bed.

When Selena was very little she remembered Mother sneaking her outside in the warmer months. They'd play and dance and chase each other like Mother was a girl herself. Now, even on full moon nights, Mother barely had enough energy to claim out of bed and to grandfather's rocking chair by the hearth.

Selena wasn't sure she liked the Lord Moon. As he waned each month so did Mother. On moonless nights she slept and did not stir. Sometimes she breathed so shallowly Selena feared her dead. It now took her nearly a week afterward to recover. Even when the Lord Moon grew round again, Mother's peak strength was always a little weaker than it had been the previous month.

For hours, Selena had sat in silence, allowing Mother to comb her hair and sing her nonsense words. Now she could bear it no longer.

"Are you dying, Mother?"

Her mother scarcely hesitated in her stroke. The comb smoothly slid through Selena's hair. "Aye, my dearest. I am dying."

Selena whirled her head around. Even on full moon nights, when mother's eyes glowed brightest, the dark hallows beneath them remained. Tears pricked in her eyes but she didn't let them fall. Grandfather called even a little girl's tears weakness. She had never seen Mother cry. Selena wanted to be like her, as strong as the woman in her oldest memories.

"Is the moon killing you?" she demanded instead. Everyone in Carvahall knew her grandmother's gods. They were old as Palancar Valley itself. Maybe, if Selena prayed hard enough, they could chase off the Lord Moon and make him give up his hold on her mother.

Mother shook her head. She looked like Elain's grandmother did when Gertrude had declared her failing eyesight incurable; neither angry nor sad, only resigned to what was to come. "I was dying before I ever met your father, Selena. The Lord Moon helps prolong the inevitable."

Selena scowled. She knew the moon should stay wide awake, day or night, to help her mother. His eye should have never dimmed. She did not say it aloud. Her mother had already sharply scolded her for wishing the moon a longer watch than he already had.

"Are we witches, Mother?"

Mother snorted. "Sloan again, I take it?"

Selena nodded vehemently. Stupid Garrow hadn't heard Sloan's comment, but she had. She'd kicked Sloan for it, right in the shin, but he'd dragged her down with him. A good bite on his arm had stopped him from crushing her.

Father had dragged her back home and spanked her. Grandfather had roared his grandchildren would not be raised as beasts. While Selena had cowered at his fury, Mother had weathered him like a mountain did the storm, even when his spittle landed on her face. Grandmother had made her clean out the chicken coop and sent her off to bed without dinner.

When everyone else had gone to bed, Mother let her eat her fill.

"He deserved it, Mother, but is he right? Normal girls aren't awake with the moon."

Mother's eyes blazed in the darkness. "You are no normal girl, Selena. You're my child."

Selena crossed her arms. "Garrow's my twin and he snores right through every full moon night. You never let me wake him up to play with us."

"Garrow is your father's son through and through, dearest. It is simply who he is. He can grow old and die as a farmer without ever regretting a single day of it. You were born with the rabhadh, the potential to be so much more."

"What's a r-radvick?"

Mother laughed, pointy canines glinting in the moonlight. "The rabhadh, my dearest, the spark. If you fan the flames, you can become... so much more than this."

She put a hand to her daughter's chest. Selena's heart jolted at the touch. It was pleasantly warm, as if a fire burned merrily inside like it did in the hearth.

"Do you have a spark, Mother?"

Mother withdrew her hand as if burned. "I do not, dearest. Not anymore."

The pleasant warmth in Selena's chest sputtered and died. Mother's high neckline concealed the scars above her heart but she knew they were still there. Sloan had told her a demon had ripped out her mother's heart and she was now only a walking corpse, but Sloan was stupid. Beneath the scar Mother's heart thumped like any other villager's. Selena could hold back her tears no longer. She fell into her mother's embrace and wept. Mother stroked her hair and hummed her lullaby, the one meant only for Selena, with a voice that ebbed and flowed like the tide.

When she could cry no more, Selena sniffled and looked up into her mother's face. "Teach me more. About my spark." Sparks grew into fires. Maybe, if Selena's fire was large enough, she could pass some on to her Mother like how Father lit torches from the hearth.

"When you are older, dearest, and can better bear the burden." Selena's protest died in her throat when Mother stared stoically down at her. Her eyes glanced out to the moon now sitting low on the horizon. "I have been dying for a very long time, Selena. I can hold on for a few years more."

She now sung her lullaby in earnest. Selena did not understand her words, but she loved it all the same. As the sun rose, Selena snuggled into her mother's arms and dreamed of silver seas. She had never left Palancar Valley before, but still she smelled salt in the breeze and heard the whisper of waves upon the shore.

Then she flew across it. Selena always woke up before she reached the other side.

* * *

Mother did not hold on for a few more years. She scarcely managed a few more months. As the chilly autumn descended into the coldest winter Grandfather complained his old bones had ever weathered, so too did her health.

One day Mother stopped getting out of bed. Even on the next full moon, she could not find the strength. Then she started losing the little things, like Grandmother's name or that the word for broth was not 'brod.'

As the snow piled up, so too did Mother's first tongue. She impatiently called for 'ushge' when thirsty and for 'mopashteen' when lonely. At first they tried to remind her of the right words, but they gave up after awhile.

Then came the day Mother stopped recognizing Father. He tried to embrace her, as he did every day, and she bit him in the shoulder. She thrashed and wailed in her bed like a wounded beast until Selena mustered up the courage to go to her side.

Mother always knew who Selena was. Selena couldn't understand her lullaby's meaning, much less pronounce it, but she knew it like her mother's heartbeat. Though Selena's tongue stumbled over the words, the melody was right. It soothed Mother into sleep.

From that day on Selena helped Grandmother nurse her mother. Cadoc worked long days outside and slept in front of the hearth. Garrow joined him. He had tried to help Mother, at first, but Grandfather had only sneered and called it women's work. Garrow had stopped helping after that.

After Mother's memory went her mind. She started gazing off into empty air, talking to people that weren't there. Always the conversations were in her native tongue.

Mother slept many long hours, but soon there came a day when she wouldn't wake up, no matter how hard Selena shook her. Mother had always been warmer than others, but now her skin burned with fever.

Though the snow was nearly waist-high, Father raced to Carvahall and returned with the healer. Selena had stubbornly refused to leave her mother's side when Gertrude examined her.

Grandmother tried to shoo her out of the room before Gertrude announced her verdict, but Selena already knew what was happening. The grim line on the healer's face said it all.

"I have no better a grasp on what ailment this is than I did three months ago. I do know it will be over soon."

Father sighed. "Will she ever wake again?"

"I'm afraid that's highly unlikely, Cadoc," Gertrude said. "Perhaps it's better that-"

Selena reached down to brush a pale lock from her mother's gaunt face. Her eyelids fluttered open. Selena held her breath. Mother's gaze was still glassy, but still sharp enough to focus on her face.

"Mother?" she whispered. A faint hope, delicate as a soap bubble, rose in her chest. The rest of the room fell silent.

Mother smiled. "Selena, my dearest. Where are your braiden?"

Like a soap bubble, Selena's hope shattered. Feeling the expectant gazes of her elders burrowing into her, Selena shook her head helplessly.

Mother's brow knit in frustration. "Mo caedmon! Your brothers, girl! Mo amleth! Your brothers!"

Grandmother and Father exchanged helpless glances. Grandfather's face darkened, but he left the room and returned hauling Garrow behind him.

"Your mum's calling for yeah, lad," he said gruffly. Then he shoved Garrow forward. He stumbled a few steps, but went no further. Mother's frown only deepened.

"A-Aye, M-M-Mother?" At his desperate stammer, Selena only stared at her twin, torn between pity and frustration. Was that the best he could do?

Mother bared her teeth at him. Garrow stumbled back. "That _oin-anem_ is not my son." Whatever that word meant, Selena knew it was a curse. Mother's blue eyes darted about, her bewilderment quickly mounting into hysteria. "Mo caedmon, mo amleth. Mami, mo leinib! Mami!"

Her cries rose into a wordless shriek. Garrow fled from the room when their mother began to thrash back and forth in her bed. Selena rushed forward. Perhaps if tried to stroke her hair, to calm her as she usually did, she could bring Mother back to them. But her grandparents grabbed her arms, hauling her away.

"Mommy!" Selena screamed.

Mother's wail deepened into a furious roar as she tried springing from the bed, her teeth snapping inches from Grandfather's face before Father forced her back. Selena's last sight of her mother alive was of Father and Gertrude rushing to subdue her. Her screams echoed long after.

Beline, daughter of none, died and took her secrets with her. With them went Selena's childhood.

* * *

From birth Garrow had his future all planned out for him. One day he'd inherit the family farm and in turn pass it down to a new generation of farmers. He courted a nice village girl named Marian and settled down with her as quickly as he could. Aside from a few minor features like the curve of his jaw, he was Cadoc's splitting image. Despite a few suspicious mutterings from the superstitious elders in his youth, Garrow proved himself a reliable and salt of the earth man. Carvahall concluded Beline had not passed her strangeness down to him.

In turn Selena grew up to resemble her mother, her light brown hair being the only obvious feature from her father's side of the family.

Carvahall had once whispered Beline to be a 'witch' and Selena a 'witch-girl.' Even men who continued calling her nasty things behind her back proposed to her. Perhaps they were bewitched by her beauty or thought they could 'tame' the wild out of her. Some suitors came from as far as Therinsford. Even one old Traveller, who stopped by every autumn, made Cadoc an offer with far more crowns than Selena had ever seen in all place.

Selena turned every offer down. She vowed not to wither away in an unhappy marriage like her mother had. Beline had been someone, once, before she'd wound up in a backwater mutilated and dying. She'd promised Selena had even greater potential. Even marrying a Traveler could bring her no satisfaction, for they followed their same plodding courses throughout the Empire year after year.

It was pure luck Selena was in town the day Morzan stopped through. He had not revealed himself to the Seven Sheaves to be a Dragon Rider on the King's business, but she had needed only one glimpse to know he was like no other man. Selena had only known her mother as a burnt-out husk, but Morzan radiated power and confidence like a noonday sun.

Across the tavern, his eyes met hers, and knew they were kindred souls. That very evening she sat astride a dragon's back, clinging to Morzan's broad shoulders as Carvahall and its valley vanished beneath them.

The spark Beline had once claimed burned in her daughter's soul must have been magic. How else could Morzan have trained her into his valued Black Hand? To be one of the Imperial agents the Varden feared above all others?

Morzan's physical prowess was accompanied by rugged good looks. He could make handsome children. When Selena accidentally fell pregnant from one of their throes of passion, she thought to keep the child. She fancied a little girl to name and raise in her mother's honor. Perhaps, if the gods smiled upon her, a daughter of a Forsworn and his loyal Black Hand would be found worthy of one day becoming a Rider herself.

Instead Selena bore a squalling, red-faced boy. She saw nothing of herself or her mother in him. Looking into his eyes of undetermined infant blue, she saw no spark, only bitter disappointment. Beline must have once felt the same way with Garrow.

She named the boy Murtagh, a rough name for a rough babe. Leaving him to the care of nannies and nursemaids, she thought little of him for the first years of his life. Morzan and his missions were far too important than a mistake that could never hope to live up to her legacy, much less his sire's.

Though she and Morzan ignored him both, Murtagh was still their son, and their blood had only made him twice as tenacious. He quickly learned to escape his caregivers. He learned where in the estate his parents preferred to hide, how to slide his way into their laps or wrap his pudgy little arms around their legs to keep them from leaving.

Selena grudgingly admired his temerity. Perhaps there was promise in him yet.

Murtagh quickly caught on to her approval and soon primarily sought her out. Morzan grew envious of his own flesh and blood, a boy barely out of infancy. He was too thick to understand children wished their affections returned, and naturally sought out love where it was given.

Morzan staggered into her quarters one night drunk and looking for his usual release. He had not been amused to find Murtagh seated on her lap, fascinated by a simple display of spellwork.

Morzan bellowed like a beast, but Selena stood her ground. She had not obeyed her father or her brother's wishes of her. She loved Morzan (or so she thought), but not even he could stop her from spending time with her own gods-damned child.

As Morzan's fury mounted, he unsheathed his blade and hurled it across the room in frustration. Murtagh, who had scurried to the safety of the corner, wailed as the steel cut into his tender flesh.

On pure instinct Selena knocked Morzan unconscious and rushed to her son's side. She had devoted years of her life to how to best kill a target, but knew little beyond the basics of healing. Her magic saved Murtagh's life. It could not heal his back. Zar'roc was a Rider's blade steeped in decades of malice and the blood of countless victims. Not even Morzan could erase such a deep scar it had dealt.

Selena never allowed Morzan to touch her after that. She knew in her heart of hearts she'd try to kill him if he ever again let his guard down around her. Morzan returned the favor by all but refusing her to see her son.

Just as Murtagh had once sought love from the only parent willing to give it, Selena again searched for another to fill the hole in her heart. Her mother had first ripped it and Morzan had only torn it wider. She thought she found it in the estate's humble gardener with the kind blue eyes.

Of course the second love of her life turned out to be Brom, the Varden's most notorious agent and Morzan's mortal enemy. When she fell pregnant by him, Selena couldn't have cared less about the child's gender or magical aptitude, only that it was born far away from the King's clutches.

There had been no time to save Murtagh when she first fled, not with Morzan's servants watching him so closely. Selena vowed to return once her second babe was born and its safety secured.

Morzan had never revealed exactly where he had found his prized Black Hand. His secrecy worked to Selena's advantage. He had known how much she'd loathed Carvahall, how she'd vowed to never return once he'd rescued her from it. He would never seek her there.

Selena's homecoming was bittersweet. Her grandparents died several winters after Beline, but Cadoc had only died the year prior. She could never reconcile with him. Garrow, at least, was amenable. He opened his home to her. Marian was excited to have her young son up with a cousin. Selena did not tell her she also had a boy only a year older than little Roran. Until Murtagh was safe and sound in Carvahall, she could afford to tell her family nothing, not with Imperial spies lurking about.

Her second son scarcely cried when he slipped into the world. He came a month early, for Selena's confinement left her stressed and sick, but he was healthy all the same. His eyes were already brilliant blue-gray. They were her eyes. Her mother's eyes.

In her heart of hearts Selena knew he'd her spark. She loved him no more or no less for it. He was no more her son than Murtagh was. If only she'd learned earlier how to love her children properly.

Selena would have named a girl in her mother's honor. Instead she named her son Eragon, after the first Dragon Rider, to honor the father had helped bring him into being.

The full moon flew high and bright that night. While Garrow and his young family slept, Selena sung Beline's lullaby to Eragon over and over again. She had never thought to sing it to Murtagh until it had been too late.

Selena had never learned what homeland her mother had hailed from, had never found another that spoke a language approaching her own. By the time she finished her final rendition, the sun was rising and her newborn slept. Her voice was hoarse, and her headache throbbing, but her pronunciation now sounded like her mother's.

Selena vowed to sing it again once Murtagh was safely nestled down beside his brother. Perhaps one day they would discover what it meant.

Secrets were a family tradition. So too were broken promises.

Selena pushed herself too hard. By the time she arrived at Morzan's estate, feverish and delusional, the healers could do nothing.

Like her mother before her, Selena died screaming for her sons.

Somewhere across the sea, three souls screamed with her, though they did not know why.

Garrow did not. However, he did bury his last hopes of his sister returning for her son. Whatever... otherness that had claimed their mother had claimed Selena too.

He vowed it would be different with her son. Marian might have coddled Eragon and indulged his fantasies, but after she died Garrow took no chances. He worked Eragon day and night. Still Eragon still proved too restless to sleep on full moon nights, and spoke wistfully of flying dreams in the nights leading up to it. When he first mentioned a voice had begun calling out to him, Garrow had buried his fear beneath sheer determination and ordered him into the Spine to hunt. The challenge gave him a tangible goal to focus on.

Beline, daughter of none, had been found near dead in a ditch near the Spine. Gods knew how long she had survived in the woods alone, suffering from a grievous chest wound and delirious with fever. Now she was buried at its edge, with all other of Garrow's ancestors who had lived and died upon his land.

Garrow did not fear for his nephew's life when he ventured out into the Spine, but he still found himself praying for Eragon's safe return every time he did so. Hunting might have been the boy's only constructive outlet, but his thoughts grew distant without Garrow and Roran to keep him grounded. Twice Selena had slipped into the night. On the second time she had never returned.

In his more hysterical moments Garrow feared the voice in Eragon's dreams was Selena's, calling him away from home forever. In his darkest nightmares the voice belonged to his mother, luring Eragon into death as she must have Selena. Like his twin, there would have been no body left to bury.

But always, Eragon returned, successful or not in his hunts. He grumbled when Garrow sent him out to do chores but did them all the same. No longer did he gaze out into the distance and speak of flying and phantom voices, but fought to keep his eyes open as he struggled only on the task at hand.

By the time Eragon entered adolescence, he stopped speaking of strange dreams altogether and slept soundly on even the brightest nights. Garrow thought the family curse broken at last. His desperate nightmares of his mother and sister stealing his nephew away in the night faded into unpleasant memory.

Only years later, when Eragon disappeared for long hours on end, did he begin to suspect otherwise. By then it was too late.

 **Some drafts of this prologue were literally three times this length. I decided to trim down on some lengthy exposition. I have a few more chapters written as first drafts and a good idea where the plot is going, but I am gonna be very busy in the coming month. But this is one I definitely plan on finishing.**

 **Selena has a flawed understanding of the situation. All words she think she knows in Beline's language are a very rough phonetic approximation. Astute readers might already notice what real world language I'm riffing from ;)**


	2. The Call

**Turns out I was able to polish up one last chapter before getting ready to pack like crazy :D**

It was scarcely past dawn and already the castle buzzed with life. Brede Standa held back a wistful sigh as servants lumbered past with great casks of beer from the store rooms. She sorely could have used a good drink to lull her to sleep - anyone able to sleep away the day would better welcome the long night of giving thanks and drunken revelry ahead.

Not for the first time she damned Roderick Lunde to the depths of the deepest hells. Even when they wanted clan cooperation, the Knoths insisted on dragging the Righ into everything.

Or the prince, as they almost always did now. As if the Righ were on his deathbed.

Ciar snickered at the thought. _I pity the force that tries to take the Righ from this world before he's good and ready for it._

Brede held back a smile. _Probably why Lunde always makes me pester the crown in his stead. Can't handle the thundercloud._

The prince always received them in the throne room. Instead they had been directed down to Triath Luan's sanctuary, down inclined hallways that gradually narrowed and lost their polished luster the deeper they descended. From anyone else, Brede would have thought it a gesture of piety.

 _Never knew the prince to call upon the gods outside of diplomacy's sake,_ Ciar mused. _You don't think...?_

 _Fuck's sake, Ciar! Gods willing, the Righ's got a century left in him._ That would only give him a hundred and fifty years he did not want but was too damned stubborn to let go of.

 _Brede, I pray he'll make it ten._

The transition from castle to mountain was seamless, a testament of long-dead architects who had gradually yielded influence to the Earth-Mother in her deep domain. The murals of nocturnal battle, the victories of a thousand Long Nights, blurred until only unadorned stone remained. The floors and ceiling became less polished and more like the cave where the great Red had once made his nest. The sounds of the castle above faded the further they strayed from the beaten path. As if the Earth-Mother held her breath, the air became dank and still. Dull flames burned low in their braziers. Light-keepers were few and far between.

When the path took a steep decline and bright white blazed ahead, Ciar halted.

Brede rolled her eyes back at him. _Are you coming or not?_

 _He's your blood, Brede. The prince requested you specifically, and this is a sacred place. I can wait._

Brede vowed to get Ciar back somehow. Then she swallowed her trepidation and pressed on alone.

Triath Luan's sanctuary shone brightly, white starfire burning high in their braziers. Despite the cavern's massive size, the massive head of his stone likeness still nearly brushed the ceiling. His outstretched wings spread the cavern's circumference, the tips meeting above the sanctuary entrance. Wrought from the rock itself, Triath Luan looked almost lifelike, as if about to leap from from his pedestal and bring the island crashing down around him as he tore his way back up to the stars.

Brede avoided the Lord Moon's gaze, represented as one glimmering moonstone in the right socket. The left eye, after all, was one that could never be captured by mortal hands nor mortal Will.

Prince Caedmon himself knelt before Triath Luan, deep in prayer. Brede made herself as small as possible, sinking deep into a submissive pose at the temple's threshold.

"Blessed is your might," she murmured, "and may it never falter. Blessed is your sight, and may it never dim. Blessed is your light-"

"-may it never fade," the prince finished hoarsely. His gaze turned down to the earth itself. "And blessed is she who birthed you twice." He smiled wanly as he rose. "Such familiar words. The routine of it all has always calmed me most, I'm afraid."

Brede hid her wince when Caedmon's voice cracked on the final word. It must have nearly been that wonderful time of year again. "You summoned me, my prince?"

"Lady Knoth is most anxious to apprehend the rogues who fly such circles around her patrols," the prince said neutrally. "She insists most are not under her domain. The banners of the Standa, or the Linde, or any other clan alone will not suffice. No, she needs _royal_ support, so all clans remember whom they ultimately answer to."

Brede snorted. "Old Lunde said the same to me when I suggested just flying out together and dealing with the problem."

Caedmon's eyes narrowed. "Did Captain Lunde also inform you the rogues appear to be sheltering on the Southern Isle?"

There was no Southern Isle, at least none so blatantly named as such. Why did the name still sound so familiar? Brede strained to recall her grandfather's lessons. She gaped when it came back to her.

 _"_ V - Verrr - Vroengard?" Her tongue tripped over the strange word. Her blood froze at such a forbidden place violated. _"Vroengard?"_

The prince bared his fangs. "Lady Knoth's patrols recovered artifacts of forbidden magic from the dens they've uncovered. They could have come from nowhere else."

 _Except further south._ It was enough to make her spine turn to water. "I do as you will, my prince."

"And the Righ wills every such... _traitor_ executed. You and your finest fliers are to depart for Mother's Womb at dawn."

Brede again sank into a bow and left. Already sprouting scales as she hurried up the hall, she opened her mind to Ciar. By the time she met up with him, she was firmly on all fours and they had ten good teams to rally. Rogues usually only grew so reckless if they had no one else to live for. If she and Ciar were fortunate, they could execute them all on the spot without fear of harming any innocent bonds.

 _...What do you suppose the prince was praying for?_ Ciar murmured as an afterthought. His partner blinked, having completely forgotten about it. _Damn it, Brede, it's not like he's the type to give thanks for every full moon night! Or to worry about something when we usually all just look forward to forgetting our troubles for the night, not unless it was really eating at him._

 _It's not our place to speculate,_ Brede chided. Then she shoved him out of her mind to indeed do just that.

Caedmon was her second cousin once removed, gods dammit, but she still knew him well enough he never bowed before the gods unless in dire circumstances and already the royal clan had been blessed with a miracle. Granted, Niall wasn't a direct heir to Caedmon, but the boy was still a trueborn Ruadhluan. Better the throne one day pass to him than a _Knoth._

Was it the Righ after all? Surely he was still in good health, if cantankerous as ever. No one in the castle had appeared ill at ease. Unless the Righ was hiding an illness from all but those who knew him best, and his heart had died a long time ago...

Brede forced the fear from her head before they ran rampant. Her duty was the rogues.

She sent a quick prayer to whatever gods were listening to show at least a little mercy toward the family that already shouldered so much of their burdens. The Isles weren't ready to lose their Righ, not without sparking civil war.

* * *

 _"Eragon."_

 _He stood barefoot on a rocky shore, the pebbles beneath his feet worn smooth by the constant grind of the tide. Cold water lapped at his toes. The night breeze nipped at his hair. It smelled of salt._

 _The stars glittered clear and bright ahead, but the full moon was clearest and brightest of all. In the moonlight the whitecaps shimmered silver. A fire burned high and bright on the horizon. If he squinted he could just make out the shore it burned on. When the wind blew right it carried the scent of smoke and sunlight._

 _"Eragon."_

 _She called to him, clear and sweeter than morning dew. Her voice was in the sky, the sea tugging at his toes, the wind in his hair. She called him home._

 _Eragon waded out until the waves lapped at his nose and he had to strain to not swallow saltwater. He glanced back at safety and a certain shore. Miles away, the fire beckoned._

 _"Eragon."_

 _He knew he was a moth drawn to the flame. Still he kicked away from solid ground._

 _He swam until his muscles burned. When he felt eyes gazing at him from below as well as from above, he pressed on. He swam until his arms turned to lead and he breathed more water than air._

 _Choking and spluttering, he fought to stay above water, even as the tide forced him under again. To one side loomed the darkness of his certain shore. On the other burned a bonfire. He knew he could reach neither._

 _Eragon._

 _The voice called to him even as he slipped beneath the waves a final time. Down, down, down he sank, as the cold seeped into his lungs and his eyesight dimmed._

 _His death loomed in the abyss below. As he plummeted it sprang up to meet him, opening its void of a mouth and-_

 _ERAGON!_

Blindly he groped for security, a drowning man reaching for a lifeline. Feeling the reassuring bulk of Saphira pressed against him, he latched onto her scales and coughed and wheezed until his body remembered it could breathe.

Groaning, Eragon slid down Saphira's side into a sitting position. He opened his eyes to the warm darkness of her wing membrane.

"Let me out, Saphira!"

Even after the gifts bestowed upon him in the Blood-Oath Ceremony his eyes needed time to adapt to the darkness of Farthern Dur's dragon-hold. He sensed Saphira's disapproval when he staggered away from his side. She padded after him.

Only after glimpsing the moonlight shining through the cavern's entrance did Eragon allow himself to sit, his dragon again coiling protectively around him. His subconscious mind finally stopped insisting he'd been swallowed by... whatever the hell that _thing_ was.

 _That was even worse than last night's dream, little one._

Eragon winced as his body, having stopped fearing for its life, decided to remind him of his pounding hangover. He and Saphira both reeked of alcohol and inebriation. It almost made him wish for the scent of salt back.

"I don't think we can keep blaming the mead," he joked weakly.

Saphira growled. _Your first dream happened before Orik was even crowned._

Ever since the Blood-Oath Ceremony Eragon had stopped sleeping. Instead he had slipped into lighter trances, his dreams nothing more than fleeting visions or feelings. And then, not long after Katrina's rescue, the drowning dreams had started. Each night they only grew in intensity, pulling him in deeper than mere mortal sleep ever had. Never before had Eragon actually thought himself drowning. His throat still burned from the saltwater.

Despite the wild revelry of Orik's coronation and spending each night in a drunken stupor, the voice still found him, and lured him into the sea. A new thought came to him.

"They're like my dreams from before," he murmured.

 _Your visions of Arya never tried to kill you, stone-head._

Eragon shook his head. "Older dreams, Saphira, from long before I ever found your egg. They used to keep me up every few weeks as a child. I grew out of them. Uncle Garrow always said they were a phase." He frowned thoughtfully. "I can't even remember what they were about, not really. Only that I'd be up all night bouncing with energy and begging Roran to come play with me. And she - the voice, whatever she is - isn't out to kill me."

Whatever the voice's intentions, he knew they were not malevolent the same way he had known to pick Saphira's egg up from its smoldering crater. His same instincts had insisted his visions of Arya were not a trap.

Saphira snorted. _Childhood fantasies are different from visions of a voice out to drown you._

Eragon's fists clenched. "It's not her fault I can't swim an ocean and that I haven't a boat." He paused. "Or wings to fly across."

Together he and Saphira poured over memories of the dream's sky. Brom had taught them the basics of astronomy. Oromis and Glaedr had further refined their studies. Navigating by the heavenly bodies was a technique wild dragons had practiced even before elves had landed in Alagaesia.

In his dreams the moon had been full. So too was the moon above his head in reality. They even looked in the same position, as if no time had passed at all between his vision and the waking world.

Eragon returned to the cave Saphira had claimed for herself. He kindled a lantern and tore through his saddle bags until he found their star charts. On a hunch he reached for the map of western Alagaesia.

Astronomy was not a precise art. Most adhered to a general formation and nightly cycle through the sky, but some wondered without regard to pattern. Some had stayed the same course for centuries. Other stars that had seemed just as dependable sometimes stopped appearing. Some appeared on some nights and not others. However, elves had chartered out the course of these particular stars just the year before, and were certainly the most accurate information available for the northern skies.

He and Saphira both reviewed his memories and confirmed they were indeed the same stars the elves had recorded from the western shore. It was the furthest west even the most tenacious scouts ventured since the Fall, the same shore that looked out to...

 _Vroengard?_ Saphira scowled at the map as she pored over his memories again and again, always reaching the same conclusion. Her frustrated skepticism wavered.

"Vroengard," Eragon murmured in awe. "A lost Rider?"

 _Or dragon,_ Saphira suggested, her tentative belief in the theory growing by the moment. _Or an elf. Anyone that might have been affected by the Fall. The Forsworn purged the island of all sentient life. What better place to hide then the site of Galbatorix's greatest massacre?_

Her Rider nodded, then paused at how resolute her faith in him suddenly was. "Did you not believe this voice out to kill me?"

 _...So too did others think of Arya's visions when she needed us the most._ Eragon tried not to think of Murtagh. Saphira looked somberly down at the map. _If this voice grows only more insistent each night, then perhaps so does her need of us. We barely reached Arya in time. If this mystery voice has already been calling you for so many nights-  
_

Her voice cut off when Eragon's alarmed mind envisioned the voice consumed by the same force that always preyed upon him in his nightmares, the cold black void that swallowed up all that was warm and bright in the world.

He frantically turned toward his belongings. Everything he needed was already in the dragon-hold. The dwarves had sent far up far too many meals over the past several days. They insisted hearty food was the perfect cure for soaking up excess alcohol.

"We should warn someone that we're leaving," he suggested as he stowed the hardier biscuits into his pack. He absently thought someone might be upset at their sudden departure.

Saphira snorted. _I don't think anyone would be sober enough to remember if we ever told them so. Or to notice we're missing, for that matter, not until the celebrations wind down._

Eragon's pounding hangover conceded this point. Even with his strengthened constitution drinking a dwarf under the table was an ill-fated bet. Muttering a spell to clear his head, he instead left a detailed note thanking the dwarves of Farthen Dur for their hospitality and again congratulating Orik for his coronation. He regretfully expressed urgent orders called him elsewhere.

Less than an hour later, the saddle bags were packed and Saphira saddled. Unfurling her wings, Saphira threw herself into the cool night air and left Farthen Dur behind. If they hurried they could be back before anyone sobered up and realized they were gone.

Whoever was calling to them, Eragon only hoped they did not reach her too late.

 **The first scene should start shedding light on certain things without too much of an info-dump. Especially considering where our heroes are heading XD**

 **Eragon is recklessly impulsive, especially when a life looks to be on on the line. Saphira both trusts in her Rider and knows from past experiences with Arya his 'dreams' can be a hell of a lot more than they seem. It is thus totally in character for them to charging off into the plot without spending multiple chapters on getting around to it :P**

 **My knowledge of foreign languages goes no further than four years of Latin and some very small knowledge of Mandarin. I rely on online dictionaries and Google Translate for this story. If something isn't translated even in the point of view of someone who was actually raised in the language, it's a choice on my point to avoid contexts I feel might be 'lost in translation.'**


	3. Convergence

**I'm working long hours in a foreign country. Updates should be slow but I have another chapter in the pipeline so we'll see how that goes.**

Fast a dragon could fly, Saphira carried herself even higher and faster upon what the Dragon Riders had long ago deemed wind roads, the swift currents of air that surged across the land at heights only dragons could reach. Glaedr had long ago instructed them of their paths and how they shifted during the seasons. Fortune smiled upon them, for at this time of year the one that could carry Saphira northwest to Vroengard had not yet swung away from the Beor Mountains.

As dawn broke and day again descended into darkness without a single rest, Eragon urged Saphira to land. She did not. Instead he tried to remain awake wit her, but crashed into sleep late into the night. The high of the full moon had long since faded and his body could not weather a second night without rest, not with how the past few weeks had strained his spirit.

His dreams offered no respite. When he shouted across the shore that he and Saphira were finally coming, the light and the tantalizing voice drifted further away to the north, beyond Vroengard, until they faded away and and left him in darkness. Eragon awoke screaming after her, his desperation bleeding across their bond. Saphira, drawing upon the energy reserves of the Belt of Beloth the Wise, pushed herself even faster. They prayed they were not too late.

They reached Vroengard by noon, its rocky shore the very image of his visions. Eragon fearlessly opened his mind far and wide. Small creatures fled from his presence. He and Saphira were the only conscious minds within reach.

 _Maybe she's shielding her mind from us,_ Saphira suggested. _She is in hiding, little one._

Then why had she called out to him in his dreams? A dark part of him, the little voice Murtagh's revelation had kindled, whispered he was slowly going mad. Perhaps he had wanted the subconscious excuse to temporarily abandon his duties. Saphira's trust in him was not so rightfully deserved. His foolhardy tendencies had resulted in her near death or capture several times. It was a small mercy his madness hadn't been a trap after all.

"No," Eragon intoned with bone-deep certainty. "She's not here. She never was."

With the sun still bright overhead, he refused to waste the daylight. He might still have been able to salvage something from this fool's venture. Vroengard had once been the home of his Order. In his wildest fancies he hoped for one last trove of eggs stashed remained stashed away to relieve the burden of rebuilding her race from Saphira's shoulders. He merely hoped for one overlooked Rider's sword to help ease the ache Zar'roc's theft and Murtagh's revelations had left upon his heart.

Like scavengers, Galbatorix and his forces had picked the island clean. Nothing remained of the Order but sun-bleached bones, scorched remnants of ruins, and a century's worth of growth.

Saphira had stubbornly refused to rest until did. She flew low to the earth, her claws almost scraping treetops at times as they scanned the island for any telltale glints of metal. Rhunon's enchantments rendered her blades impervious to rust. They steered clear of Doru Araeba. There the apprentices and their young dragons had been massacred. Eragon had no wish to wade through the bones of children.

By sunset they had flown far north than Eragon had ever thought to venture. He could scarcely keep his eyes open. Saphira's exhaustion resonated strongly with his. Unable to stand the terrible silence of Vroengard, they now kept their minds closed to all but the other. They were alone, but for the beasts and-

Saphira's nostrils twitched. _Ash._

Eragon's inhaled deeply and smelled nothing. Only peering into a dragon's sharp senses did he scent the remnants of a day-old fire.

His eyes scoured the landscape. There was no burned trees to suggest a wildfire had raged just the day before. The grass and leaves looked relatively wet, nowhere near dry enough to have ignited in the first place.

Saphira followed the scent. From a distance the ruin looked like any other, its roof long caved in or burned away and its high stone walls choked by ivy. Only when they flew directly overhead reveal the camp.

The undergrowth had been seared away long enough for patches green grass to take root in the open patch of sunlight. Three black rings for camp fires marred the greenery. Eragon's gaze riveted to the prints in the exposed soil.

"Impossible," he breathed.

Careful not to disturb the site, Saphira landed at the very edge. Up close the evidence grew only more compelling. Dragon prints, even six indentations in the grass where they had hunkered down the night. The bones of their kills, cracked for meat, lay carelessly discarded in a corner of the hideout.

The dragons had not been alone. Human (or elf?) shaped footprints, just as fresh, mixed freely with the dragon paws.

"More survivors of the Fall?" he ventured.

 _No. Even at their youngest those dragons should be a century old. Look how small these tracks are. And their shape is... off._ Saphira placed a paw in a print for comparison. While it was still twice her size, a dragon decades older than her should have been many times larger. Together they cocked their heads and squinted at the other oddity.

Saphira had four front-facing toes and a hawk-like talon on the back of each paw, well-suited for clutching stony cliff sides or grasping prey. Instead these dragon prints all bore _thumbs._

Once more Eragon surveyed the camp. Concealed as the site looked from the air, the group had done nothing to disguise their presence, leaving all evidence exposed to a roving eye. Even if this next generation was more lax than their elders, surely they had still been sworn to some form of secrecy, more defensible areas to shelter in? There were gaps in the stone walls, where enemies might lie in ambush...

From the undergrowth, a pair of red eyes glinted in the glowing gloom.

 _"Sitiche!"_ a voice snarled.

Saphira's head snapped around, fire blooming in her throat. Eragon reached inward for his magic.

No longer needing secrecy, a blazing force burned down his defenses ward by ward. Somewhere he dimly heard his dragon snarl as he grit his teeth and pushed back. Straining against the blackness edging out his vision, he glared at the first of the figures emerging from the forest. With the indomitable might of the ocean, the force bore down, and dragged him into darkness.

* * *

"Elf!" Aed snarled, spittle flying from the force of his curse.

"Human, I think," old Agnar said dispassionately as he surveyed the unconscious bodies. "Downed a few curious brats back in my youth. Only men have hair that muddy a color."

"He can't be more than sixteen," Etain murmured. "As does his dragon. Do all Riders fight so young?"

Agnar snorted. "The beasts grow like weeds and breed like them. She's likely a yearling. Old enough to have laid her first clutch."

No longer requiring stealth, Aed's flesh prickled with scales as he puffed himself up in his rage. "Then why aren't they dead already? We should ki-"

Brede whipped her head around with a snarl, not quite pleased to see the boy properly shrink and submit beneath her. Not quite thirty, he was still quite the adolescent himself. Aed could use a few more scars to learn he shouldn't go mouthing off to his superiors unless he meant to back it up with a proper challenge. Ciar carefully waited for her lead. Beneath their iron stares the rest of their team fell obediently silent.

Dragon Riders should have been killed on sight. To hesitate was to give them time to kill with their foul sorcery.

Brede had very well intended to do her grandfather proud... until she had locked eyes with a ghost.

Ignoring the she-dragon entirely she padded to the Rider's side to inspect him close up. Once the Standa clan had been plentiful, their family tree full of rogues and outcasts and stupid boys that risked flying beneath the Riders' noses to romp with human women. Bastard children left amongst the ignorant villages must not have been unheard of. Yet those days were decades gone. Any of her clan's blood should have been long diluted. Especially when the boy's pointed ears and inhuman angles obscured even his human blood. Cocking her head and peering past the traces of elf magic, she still did not recognize any familiarity in his features. Eyes closed, the boy was a total stranger.

Kneeling at the boy's side, she thumbed one eyelid open. Even clouded with unconsciousness and lacking fire, that shade of fierce blue-gray was unmistakable.

Only years of rigid training kept Brede from swearing her head off. Ciar's mind bristled faintly at her distress but he betrayed no sign of it to their troop. Those were not that the eyes of a Standa, but the eyes of the Righ's consort, the very same she had passed down the Righ's only daughter.

Shoving aside her disgust, Brede once more dipped into the Rider's mind, reaching for his oldest memories. The poor bastard knew little of his bloodline, but one ancestor he knew only by same made Brede's heart shudder.

Her gaze flicked to Etain and her three other casters. "Fetch the chains we meant for the rogues. We have prisoners for the Beast."

Agnar and her other two elders rumbled in discontent. All three had felled Riders in their prime. None defied her now.

The chains had been intended for a rogue in arachtide, to keep him dull and compliant if they had needed to shepherd him somewhere alive, or else to help bear the dead home. It did not take Brede and her casters long to rework their purpose for carrying an unconscious dragon.

"Even for a little thing she'll be a bitch to carry so far over the water," Agnar muttered. "Wake her up and Bjorn and I can handle her alone."

"And have her risk throwing off our Will and killing us all through that wild magic of hers?" grizzled Gerlinde snorted. "I'll help carry her, you lazy old bastard."

"No," Brede said curtly. "Aed and Etain will. Three fliers and a caster should be more than enough to watch over her."

Etain was the youngest and most inexperienced of her casters. Though Brede bore the symbol of royal authority they were still about to fly over troubled territory with prisoners that should have been killed on sight. She needed Gerlinde, Tyr, and their fliers ready for a fight.

An iron collar was snapped around the she-dragon's neck and wings bound to her sides for safety's sake. Only then were the chains strapped to her middle so that Agnar and the others could support her in the air. Bjorn's deft fingers bound them all together. They were not gentle. There was a pause as they all stopped to examine one of the last true dragons. Aye, her snout was somewhat longer and her features sharper than average, but aside from her strange paws she looked disturbingly like one of their own. Only with age would she grow to a slow and lumbering size.

Brede bound the boy on her own, stripping him of his blade and anything he might have used to free himself. Always she made sure to leave cloth between ruthless steel and his naked skin. She balked at the thought of his flesh being rubbed raw and bleeding. If the boy was blood she could not bear let any harm befall him.

...Not unless the Righ willed it. Beline had been irrevocably banished. Perhaps any humanborn descendants were just as dead in the eyes of her father. She needed his judgement. Immediately.

 _See the boy to the Beast,_ Ciar murmured privately. _I'll handle the Righ._

 _He'll smite you on the spot for daring to show him such a memory. I made the call. It's my hide to risk._ Brede glanced at their team. All wore the royal colors only for the need to present a united front against Roderick Lunde and the Knoth contingent. At the mission's end all would eagerly shed the Righ's banners for their individual clans. _Yet I also need to make sure the boy and the she-dragon both make it to the Beast alive. I think the death of one kills the other._

 _Brede, gods know I'll see them there in one piece just as I'd weather the Righ and all his wrath. I'd swear all three of my hearts on it. Just say where you need me._

Brede delivered her orders. The rogues were Roderick Lunde's problem now. Giving his search party a wide berth, Ciar would lead their patrol directly to the Beast. The Rider and his dragon were to be guarded with the utmost care and kept in the same cell. Ciar had full authority to discipline in her name. She looked each of her subordinates in the eye as she made her orders, hunting for the slightest trace of defiance. Ciar, a stoic black wall, stood faithfully at her side.

Carefully she placed the boy in Bjorn's lap. Could he die if pulled too far apart from his bonded? Her grandfather's lessons about Riders were a jumbled mess in her head. Brede decided to take no chances. Until their final fate was decided, the pair would remain close as physically possible.

Ciar and their fliers immediately departed for the northwest. On her own wings she set her course for the north.

Brede prayed she had made the right decision. Whatever her oaths demanded, she had no wish to be stricken down by the Righ's hand like some foul Serpent.

 **Ah, yes, some answers and some even more questions!**


	4. Belly of the Beast

**I am flattered for all the interest this and my older stories still attract, but please remember I only have so much time and energy these days to write. This is the idea that makes me excited to write at the moment, so this the story that's getting the love.  
**

 _Eragon, wake up!_

He instinctively shied away from the burning brilliance of Saphira's mind but the numbing void of unconsciousness had been burned away and could offer no respite. Thoughts reeling, it took him to remember his last few moments of awareness, and realize Saphira blazed with fury and desperation.

Eragon's eyes snapped open to darkness. He did not need eyes to feel the cold bite of iron shackles around his neck and wrists, though he could not hear the rattle of chains. Even his clothes were not his own. The coarse, stinking fabric rubbed against his skin. His bare feet shivered on dank stone floor. Saphira's bulk was a comforting warmth at his back.

 _Saphira! Are you hurt?_

 _Aside from the chains and my wounded pride, no. We are together, little one. I am fine._

For a moment they basked in the warmth of their bond. Then Eragon's lips twitched with a grim smirk. Their captors had caught them unawares but had lacked crucial foresight. They had imprisoned a Rider and his dragon together. They had not drugged him. So long as he could reach Saphira he could call upon his magic.

Eragon turned his concentration inward as he searched for his inner power... and felt nothing. The collar around his neck pulsed gold before it burned. Eragon hissed from the pain and lost his focus. As soon as he stopped reaching for his magic the light died down, the fire around his throat fading into the coolness of iron.

His eyes adjusting to the gloom, he could just barely make out the smooth stone floors and walls of a cell wide enough for Saphira to unfurl her wings. A dull red light emanated from the cell's single window. Eragon squinted but could not make out the door. Inspecting his shackles, he found their arcane runes glowed with a faint gold light. Despite his extensive study with Oromis he could recognize none of them.

Turning to Saphira, he found her uninjured, but such manacles around her neck and all four of her legs. Her eyes blazed indignantly in the dark.

 _I tried summoning my flame earlier,_ she said bitterly. _Not even sparks._

Eragon's response sputtered and died at the sound of heavy footsteps and clanking armor approaching. He clenched his fists and...

Fell to the ground with a choked splutter as the runes glowed even brighter than before. His shackles refused to budge from the earth, no matter how hard he writhed. Saphira, splayed alongside him, snarled. Against such mysterious magic not even a dragon had the power to resist.

The seamless stone wall of their cell briefly shone before it flowed away like water. Eragon could only gape as two armored dragons easily twice Saphira's size stepped through. The dark green one lowered his head to place a dragon-sized pail of water in the corner. The other disdainfully dropped a coarse bag stinking of fish. Rooted to the ground, Eragon's gaze was naturally drawn to their paws. Both had thumbs like the prints on Vroengard.

Only then did Eragon realize a man stood between them. The dull light just revealed blond hair and light armor of hardened leather. In the darkness his eyes glinted gold.

Eragon's mouth worked soundlessly as the man knelt by Saphira's side but his voice died at his collar. For a moment Saphira's runes shone before the light died down, but still brighter than it had been before. When the man moved toward him Eragon instead threw open his mind to demand answers.

Three minds that burned like fire ruthlessly bore down upon him before he retreated behind his shields. The gold-eyed man bared his teeth at him. His canines were too sharp to be anything human.

 _"Amhlair,"_ the man hissed.

Rough hands seized his shackles. Eragon flinched back from the raw power that emanated from searing skin.

His enchantments enforced, the man deftly stood and stalked out of the cell, his dragon guards dutifully at his heels. As their tails slipped over the threshold the stone walls surged back in, leaving only the small window behind.

Feeling the invisible hand around his throat release its hold, Eragon ignored Saphira's warning growl and hastened to the window. When he craned his neck just the right way he could see winding stone halls and a brazier where a red flame flickered low. The dark green dragon paused to breathe upon it, leaving behind an emerald light that burned brighter than the old one.

Then he noticed the yellow eyes shining from the cell across from him. A human face, most of its features obscured by an unkempt beard, leered back.

"Who are you?" he demanded. "Where are we?"

The man's weathered features split into a smirk. In the flickering light his teeth seemed sharper by the second. Scales bubbled up from his skin as his face bulged into a snout and his forehead sprouted horns. Stunned, Eragon could only watch in horror as the dragon inhaled... and blew hot and rancid breath into his face.

The Dragon Rider leaped away from the window and to the safety of Saphira's side. The hoarse, rumbling laughter of the dragon-man followed him.

 _"Gealtair!"_ bellowed the dragon-man in a thunderous voice. _"An sithiche ta a gealtair!"_

From the surrounding cells came a chorus of roars and cries of _"gealtair!"_ Some fell silent as the guards stormed past. Eragon just glimpsed the gold-eyed man and the two dragons from his window before they stepped into the cell across from his. A dragon's agonized bellow turned high and reedy before it broke off altogether. Dead silence reigned.

Unable to stop himself, Eragon crept back to the window. He glimpsed a small shape huddled at the back of the cell across from his, trembling but alive. Three pairs of eyes caught eyes. Man and dragons alike had glowing eyes but round pupils instead of slits like Saphira's. The gold-eyed guard bared his fangs, scales crawling across his face as a warning before Eragon retreated away from view.

 _Weredragons,_ he thought numbly, not daring himself to speak aloud. _We've been captured by gods damned weredragons._

For a long time Saphira was silent. _I was not aware Solembum and the werecats had such cousins._

Her Rider swallowed thickly. _They don't._

* * *

Sweat poured down Brede's back and her limbs trembled from exhaustion. Try as she might, she could not retract her claws. They gouged into the stone floor as she knelt before the Righ. She breathed shallowly to avoid coughing on the smoke that billowed forth from his nostrils. He tore through her mind with the ruthless force of a storm in search of the memories she had plucked from the boy's memories.

Eragon. The boy's name was _Eragon._ It was like the gods were trying to make her Righ a kinslayer. If one could count the mud-blooded Rider bastard of an exile as kin.

Again and again, the Righ cycled through her recollections. Always he paused at the memory of the boy's eyes. The eyes of his daughter, the eyes of his mate. The Righ kept his emotions to himself. So did Brede. She could serve as the boy's salvation or execution.

"The boy," the Righ rasped at last. "Bring him to me."

Brede was about to ask of the she-dragon, but her mind was still open to the Righ's. Raw power flowed across their link, chasing the ache from her limbs and granting her the energy to fly to the ends of the earth and back.

"Bring them _both_ to me." Sparks flew from the force of his words.

Brede deepened into a full bow before she sprang for the exit. She did not know whether the Righ wished to embrace the boy as his own or else personally make an example of him. Her Will was the Righ's, and he Willed them brought before him.

* * *

Neither Eragon nor Saphira could gauge how long they had been unconscious in captivity before their awakening. Without a natural light source it was impossible to track the passage of time beyond patrols. Each was a man flanked by two armed dragons. The second and third routine patrols passed by their cell without a second glance, pausing only to replenish the flame in the brazier. The fourth patrol once more forced them to the ground before entering to burn away their refuse and leave yet more water and salted fish after renewing their bonds. None had reacted to his attempts at questions or even to his insults. He doubted they understood him at all.

Eragon wrinkled his nose and downed his share without complaint. His need to remain strong and keep Saphira from worrying about his health prevailed over his discomfort at consuming flesh. After all, his meditations had only lightly touched the small fish swimming in Du Weldenvarden's shallow streams. Their minds had been too alien and simple to truly relate to. He sorely wished for something to cleanse his breath. Everything in the cell rank of salted fish.

Between the patrols Eragon slept in spurts. His dreams were a fragmented mix of falling and drowning.

At the sound of the fifth patrol Saphira growled for the extra footsteps. She bared her fangs in a furious snarl when their collars once more left them prone upon the ground.

When the stone melted away Eragon's gaze first flicked to the familiar faces. The gold-eyed man and his first two dragon guards were there. With a silent snarl the gold-eye man slammed a smaller pail of water upon the floor. Behind the three guards loomed two strange dragons. One was stone-gray and the other dark brown, their hides marred by well over a hundred scars between them. Twined around their right horns were pale silver bands of wool with another of blood-red beneath.

At their paws stood two new humans. The gold-eyed man's armor was rough and simple, covering only his shoulders and torso. The armor of these two were still leather, but of finer quality, and covering most of their bodies. Around their right arms were the same bands of silver and red, bright against the dull leather. Eragon squinted before he blinked in mild surprise. The slighter figure must have been a woman, albeit with the craggy face of a hard life lived. Both stepped into his cell to drop the bundles in their arms before returning to the sides of the dragons.

Then they stepped aside to allow two new human-shaped beings into his cell. They had eschewed helms, allowing a clear look at their faces. The left was a man, tall and gaunt, long black hair tied back and with a hawk-like nose. His expression was stone and his eyes blazed silver. He stood slightly behind his companion, a woman shorter and stouter than he. Her blond hair was cropped close to her ears and eyes a blue lighter than Saphira's.

"You will come. You and the she-dragon."

Bewilderment exploded from both sides over his link with Saphira. Never had they heard one of the weredragons speak their tongue before. The woman's voice was both rough and hissing, but every word careful and deliberate. They understood her.

"Why?" Eragon spat.

"The Righ wills it. So you will come. Wash. Dress." She gestured at the supplies her roommates had deposited on the floor. "Look... not like _this._ Do not fight."

"Why not?" This time he kept his tone carefully neutral. Saphira's mutinous snarl spoke for them both.

She casually nodded to the prison guards behind her. Chains were slung over their backs. One snorted a puff of smoke. "You still go to Righ."

Saphira huffed in seething resignation. _I reek of fish and that crazed bastard across the hall can't shut up. There's gods forsaken grime in my scales. If this Righ means to kill us at least we won't die in this blasted cell. Little one, let us face whatever lies ahead with dignity. I won't be chained like some rabid beast._

"Will you remove the collars?" He was not surprised in the slightest by her blunt refusal. With only slight hesitation he relayed their concession in the common tongue.

"No." Eragon's heart stopped. Would she demand an unbreakable oath in the ancient language? Instead the woman's steely eyes locked gazes with Saphira. "I hear your vow from _you,_ she-dragon. Not your Rider."

Most humans were content to believe Saphira merely an intelligent beast of burden. The elves revered her to the point where they dared not touched their unworthy minds to hers. Of course one half a dragon herself had no qualms. With grudging respect Saphira lowered her defenses enough to consent. Fearing trickery, Eragon opened his mind too. Better he die defending her than allow a stranger to bend her will. But the weredragon accepted Saphira's sullen agreement and withdrew behind her own shields without incident.

While the weredragons left the cell, the patrol took only few grudging steps out of sight. Eragon couldn't help but roll his eyes when the hold on his collar finally released and allowed him to stand.

 _I suppose they don't want us mounting a daring escape with your grooming supplies,_ Saphira said sardonically.

First Eragon took the larger pail of water and with a rag scoured the scales Saphira always had trouble reaching. She rumbled in appreciation. Then he stripped and turned the water and scentless bar of soap upon himself. The clothes given were modest things of wool and leather, plain brown and white. They were not his clothes, the ones he had been captured in or the ones stowed in Saphira's saddle bags, but they were miles above prison rags. The rough leather boots were ill-fitting but better than bare feet.

Eragon slapped a hand to his collar. The dwarven charm that shielded him from scrying had been taken too.

 _Little one, we don't have the foggiest clue where we are,_ Saphira pointed out. _I don't think anyone is coming to our rescue._

Her Rider shivered. _Who said Galbatorix wants to rescue us? Not only will he find us, but the army of dragons he always wanted._

 _If Galbatorix knew about them they would have been used against the rebellion from the beginning. Their magic can block even my magic, aye? Oromis and Glaedr never spoke of weredragons. Surely they must have some way of screening themselves... which also means our allies still can't scry us._

Focusing on the task at hand, Eragon sniffed the contents of the smaller pail. Smelling mint and vinegar, he took a smaller rag to scrub his teeth before rinsing the foul taste of fish from his mouth. Then Saphira downed the entire bucket to do the same. The comb was a rough thing of bone. Eragon winced as he wrenched it through the snarls of his short hair.

His other hair was not a problem so easily solved. Running a hand over his patchy stubble, he frowned. Oromis had pressed him to remain clean-shaven unless he wanted to grow out a proper beard. During his time in Du Weldenvarden he had not been able to and so had shaved every day. Still young and stubble erratic, it was a habit he'd maintained. One guard had sported a short beard, both the gold-eyed man and the hawk-nosed stranger were clean-shaven.

 _No razor,_ he grumbled. _Gods forbid I try to stab anyone with it._

"We're finished," he called aloud. Their shackles promptly sent them back to the floor.

Once more the woman and the man entered the cell. She spared Saphira a curt nod before her critical gaze fell upon him.

 _"Leth-chinnichte clomhrachan,"_ she grumbled.

From his belt her companion pulled out a long iron file. It unfolded to reveal a razor. Stoically he knelt down and wet the blade. Eragon froze as it was roughly ran over his cheeks. Saphira held back a snarl. They both heaved silent sighs of relief when the dark-haired man stepped back.

"Be good," the woman told them sternly. "Do not fight. Do not run."

The invisible hand on Eragon loosened its hold. Then the two weredragons bent down and hauled him to his feet. Even the woman was a head taller than him. His pride stung slightly at that. Hands holding his shoulders in an iron grip, they ushered him into the hall. From the other cells peered curious eyes. None dared call out a single word.

He dragged his feet until the two banded dragons and the humans at their feet entered the cell and came out with Saphira shuffled between them. Wings half-spread, one stood at her front and the other her rear.

The three prison guards led the way through labyrinthine hallways dotted only by braziers and the shining eyes of prisoners. Eragon studied the floor. A gradual gradient slowly led them upward, the hallway widening to a point where they no longer had to squeeze against the walls to let passing patrols by. They passed through iron gates that shone with runes and through stone walls that gave way to halls. Even so far from his cell the salty smell lingered. Were fish all they fed their prisoners?

The sudden sound of cracking bones and Saphira's alarmed growl made his head whip around. With two iron grips upon his shoulders he could move no more. He just managed to catch her two previously human guards in the last moments of transformation as they heavily thudded onto all fours. Now that the hall was wide enough for three dragons in a row Saphira was squarely situated between them.

Up ahead glinted the smallest bit of sunlight. Eragon squinted against the brightness. His nostrils flared at salt upon the fresh breeze. Only then did he hear the faint murmur of the sea and realize the stone floor was now faintly wet with spray.

Armored dragons and men in leathers watched them like hawks as they progressed to the gaping maw at the end, more cavern mouth than prison gate. Two unarmored dragons, one blood-red and the other golden brown, stepped forth from the ranks to flank his sides. Upon their backs were riders. Whatever their shape, all four weredragons wore the same silver and red bands.

"Stop," the woman ordered.

Eragon obeyed, Saphira's escort halting behind him. She held both his shoulders firmly as the hawk-nosed man released him and stepped forward. Pale flesh, dark hair, and leather seamlessly blended into black scales as the form grew and lost any semblance of humanity. The weredragon stretched raven wings before furling them. His front legs sank forward into a familiar stance.

"Be good," the woman chided. Then she wrapped one arm around him and climbed onto her companion's back one-handed.

Bemused, Eragon let the woman settle him between her and the black dragon's spike, smaller than what he would have expected for a dragon of such a size. Saphira's jagged scales rubbed his legs raw without a settle. Testing the weredragon's scales, he found them firmer and more closely folded together. They did not cut his flesh. Behind him sat the woman, a small but firm shape that radiated a dragon's heat. Her breath was hot on his neck. In a heartbeat her fangs could tear out his throat.

Lifting her right first to her heart, the woman announced something in her guttural tongue, too deep and rumbling for him to make out the words. Her nine companions echoed her call. The prison guards rumbled their response. Humans and dragons both mirrored the right hand to the heart, but bared their exposed necks in her direction.

The raven weredragon unfurled his wings, leaving the thresh-hold behind with a single thrust. His two guards followed, flanking his sides, before Saphira's escort ushered her after them. Above the morning sun blazed bright and clear. Below white waves crashed upon jagged rocks.

Eragon craned his neck to finally view their prison. From the sea jutted a solitary mountain of jagged gray stone, its sides barren but for caterwauling gulls and windswept lichen. Dragons with riders circled its peak in rigid patrols. The prison wasn't built upon the island. It _was_ the island, its cells and passages carved into the very rock.

He squinted thoughtfully at it. As their prison sank into the distance its craggy surface almost resembled some great brooding beast about to rise up and bellow after them.

Saphira snorted at his sentiment. _Good riddance._

Eragon agreed. Whatever fate awaited them with the Righ, they would face it together, and not die alone and forgotten in the dark.

 **Look at the pairing tags and hint's I've been dropping, people! Of _course_ I was going this path ;) Though our mysterious race would take great offense to being called 'weredragon' if Eragon or Saphira ever dared say so to their face.**

 **Young and inexperienced as she is with foreign languages, Selena's phonetic interpretation of her mother's tongue was very... loose. Having mastered a foreign language himself and having had quite a bit exposure to several others, Eragon is better able to process the words even if he can't understand a word of it yet. By now it should be very obvious what language family I'm primarily drawing from.**

 **Sea stacks are friggin' awesome works of nature. That is all.**


	5. The Prodigal Son

**I could not force the first part of this chapter out and so stalled out on it. Writing some of Eragon's family issues for another fic of mine helped inspire this, and the last parts just flowed out of me :D**

With the sun overhead Eragon was able to determine they flew westward. He hoped it was back in the direction of the mainland, but he had no idea how far the weredragons had dragged them from Vroengard since their capture. Their flight carried them only over ocean. In the distance he sometimes sighted land masses too small to be anything but islands. Always their captors angled the course of their wings to steer them away from land. Behind him the woman tensed until the islands once more dipped out of sight.

Quickly tiring of the wind and waves, Eragon fearlessly studied the weredragons instead for they openly stared right back at him. He wondered what conversation flowed between their minds for outwardly they were silent, thoughts and feelings firmly locked behind mental barriers.

Saphira's guards displayed a wide range of ages. The red dragon was young and restless, for his temper burned bright as his scales. Smoke poured from his nostrils with every huffing breath. At times he strained ahead of the group until a growl from a superior made him fall back into formation. The stone-gray male's hide was marred with scars and his face weathered from a hard, long life, eyes set deep in their hollows. Despite the obvious gap in their ages there was no great size disparity between young and old. The weredragons lacked the unrestrained growth of Saphira's race. From signs of such aging in their elders Eragon figured they eventually grew old and died, but had no idea of their lifespan beyond that.

Eragon's mind burned with a thousand unasked questions. His curiosity was heightened by boredom.

 _Hold back, little one,_ Saphira gently chided him. _Our dignity is all we have left._

He knew he his dragon was just as curious as he was. Only her stubborn defiance to admitting their captors any access to her mind held back her need to interrogate them.

"Brede Standa." Eragon jolted before he craned his head around. They were the first and only words the woman had spoken to him in hours. "My name is Brede Standa."

"Why tell this to me now?"

Brede Standa averted her gaze and spoke no more. Her face was inscrutable.

The sun was flying low when yet another island appeared on the horizon. Beneath him the black dragon shifted his course directly for it.

Their party was not alone anymore. More dragons bearing the silver and red bands flew into formation as Brede roared orders at them. Some bore riders in human shape. Others flew ahead to push the fishermen from their path. The ships were small and wooden. In the dying sunlight the fish upon their decks shimmered silver. Two dragons with a single net between them deftly dove down and hauled up a writhing pile to dump upon a ship.

As the island neared Eragon discovered there were in fact two, the much larger one several leagues back. The smaller one resembled their prison, a mount of stone that jutted up from the sea, though gentler in its sides and crowned with real grass instead of lichen and bird shit. Beneath the shadow of their shepherds flocks of scraggly-furred sheep bleated as they scaled the treacherous slopes from the stony beach to the stone-walled paddocks on the grassy plateau.

Weredragons did not live on the mountain. They lived _within_ it. Archways and balconies and snarling dragons had been hewn into the gray edifice. Dragons buzzed in and out like bees from their hive. Braziers and beacons were already being lit against the growing gloom. Dragon-fire blazed high and bright in every color of the rainbow.

Rather than aim for the obvious entrances Brede's mount flew straight for a snarling dragon's head carved into the heart of the mountain. Red braziers made its carved sockets glow hellish red. Standing astride the head was the carved form of an armored man. His massive blade, not made of stone but from something else entirely, shone in the sunset. Both almost looked ready to come alive and strike down any intruder that dared enter without their leave.

As their party neared the stone between the dragon's fangs shimmered and vanished like an illusion. The weredragons and Saphira easily swooped down to land within its maw.

Brede's iron hand once more clamped down upon his shoulder. He followed her down from the black dragon's back without complaint. Eragon watched in horrified fascination as the dragon's form shook and shivered, scales giving way to pale flesh and leather armor that formed almost as an afterthought. The black-haired man seized his other shoulder, his claws just shrinking down into nails and the last of his scales smoothing into skin. The hallway dwarfed them all.

While the mountain's exterior was slate gray its interior walls were black as night. Realizing the walls were not smooth but undulated Eragon squinted for a closer look. He immensely regretted it. The Stygian shapes upon the walls were not snakes. Some had a multitude of mouths or others a thousand eyes running down their coils but he had no other name for them.

Despite his circumstances Eragon could not tear his gaze away from the walls as he was ushered onward. The serpentine abominations were not unopposed. Gray dragons sometimes arose from the darkness to defy them but they were always swiftly snuffed out, enveloped in obsidian coils or engulfed by maws like the void. It was battle, furious and futile.

Then came the new dragon, so massive neither wall could contain him. His wings were the walls but his body enveloped the ceiling for countless steps forward. He was not stone gray but the black of deepest night. He should have blended into the endless tangle of serpents but did not. Only then did Eragon understand the difference between darkness and oblivion. Even a moonless night was illuminated by stars, like how the dragon's black hide was broken by the bright silver of his lone eye. The snakes were not black, but swallowed all light and color in their wake.

In his wake came in an army. The two dragons at his flanks each took up a wall on their own. The one on his right shone silver like the moon. At his left burned one red as the fiery dawn. Behind them flew dragons of every color, all limned in silver.

Beside them the stone-gray dragons fought on, now joined by men and women in the same dull shade. They fell as before. Their luminous comrades offered helping hands and paws. Now the fallen rose, bright and blazing, to continue the fight anew. Even their surroundings grew brighter as they drove back the darkness coil by coil.

When it grew too bright Eragon closed his eyes and blinked rapidly. As he adjusted to the brilliance he realized the flame in every brazier burned white-hot. The passage had widened into a massive chamber. On every wall men and dragons were twined so closely it was hard to tell where one ended and another began. Their eyes looked down to the last serpent in the room, a coiled behemoth carved from stone.

Brede and her companion sank to their knees, dragging him with them. Both let him go to raise their right hands to their hearts and expose their necks toward the stone serpent. Brede shot him a purposeful glare. Eragon mimicked her only to have an excuse to glance back at Saphira.

He had expected her to at least growl in protest. Instead she quailed in earnest submission. Across their link a deep and primal instinct, the same impulse that kept young and foolish wild dragons from running afoul a temperamental elder, urged them both to _yield._

Only then did Eragon gaze up at the stone serpent and realize it a throne. In its uppermost coils perched the storm incarnate. His hide was the dark gray of thunderheads and marred with the scars of a thousand battles. Not all looked to have been dealt by dragons. Smoke billowed from his nostrils to wreathe his head like storm clouds. Through them shimmered the thin silver chains twined around his gnarled horns. His flashing silver eyes reminded Eragon of lightning. His rumbling voice was like thunder, too deep and bone-rattling for him to decipher the words.

Brede answered, her eyes avoiding the Righ's. _"Mo Righ, mi taisbean a' marcaiche agus a callaidh-arach. Ur Aigne is mo."_

The Righ descended from his throne, his terrible gaze never leaving Eragon's. The Rider watched in horrified rapture as the weredragon started to shift. Most transformations he had previously witnessed had been relatively swift, more fascinating than revolting. The Righ's transformation was slow and agonizing to watch as if his body bent only due to his sheer, stubborn will.

Ruthlessly the Righ tore through his formidable defenses as if they were paper. Perhaps he meant to punish Eragon for staring. The Rider choked back a scream and did his best to shove Saphira out of harm's way. But the Righ ignored their bond entirely, wrenching deep into his earliest and most intimate memories.

When Eragon was dragged back to reality, gasping and shuddering, an iron hand had grabbed his chin and forced him to peer upward. Set in a craggy human face with an unkempt human beard, framed by a shining crown definitely not made of silver or any metal Eragon had ever seen before, the Righ's eyes had not lessened in their fury.

 _"Swear to me in this damned tongue that you'll obey every order given by me or your bonded will pay the price of your defiance."_

Ice chilled his blood at the ironclad certainty of the ancient language. Eragon swore. He expected Saphira to try and stop him. Instead she made her oath in the same breath as his. After all, the Righ had never specified which of them would pay the price, and his claws were digging into Eragon's flesh.

Yet the Righ did not release him. Blazing eyes never leaving Eragon's, he snarled. _"Damain an t-siursach! An tacharan a suilean ann! Tha an rabhadh ann! Tha mo daimheach ann, gu ruige Triath Luan riaghail!"_

The Righ glared at his audience, as if daring them to give him good reason to strike them down. None breathed a word. He disdainfully withdrew his hand from Eragon's chin.

"You and your beast are to follow Brede Standa to your chambers. There you shall remain until I deign otherwise. You are not to use your damned Rider magic or even speak the ancient language without my leave."

Though Brede was outwardly calm she tugged on his arm with incessant force. He eagerly followed her out with Saphira dutifully at his side.

Her guards rose to follow. Their Righ's growl stopped them where they stood. Brede and her 'guests' continued unabated.

 _I suppose that makes us honored guests now,_ Saphira joked darkly. _What a privilege._

Eragon flashed his teeth in something that could not be called a smile. _Oh, aye. Just like Murtah was._

* * *

Caedmon was the Righ's grandson and heir apparent, gods dammit. He suspected his grandfather kept himself alive through snarling in the face of death whenever the inevitable possibility raised its head. Anyone that had inherited a fraction of such utter willpower should have better control of their own damned body.

Brede must have suspected his time was near when he had ordered her off to Vroengard but not even she could have known he had been clinging to his humanity by the fingertips. Caedmon had only intended to delay a few days more, so he would be capable of dealing with the Knoths on his own once the rogues had been delivered to justice. Instead he had lost his control altogether mere hours after her departure.

Myrna butted her head against his, her exasperation dulled by empathy and earnest love. _Sulking never helped anyone, dearest._

Their bond was purest this way, shared between souls without physical words to disturb their utter understanding. It still did not erase his irritation at not actually being able to form any actual damn words for the time being.

Caedmon huffed smoke. _You didn't have to burn my entire store of dragonbane. Especially since the patrol to Vroengard turned up-_

Myrna growled, all humor lost. _So the Righ insists on a public execution. Who cares if it's a Rider rather than a rogue this time? The Rider's dead all the same. With the Lord Moon tiring once again, do you really wish to have painfully drawn out your arachtide just to see the bloodshed firsthand? And certainly be stuck like this when you're needed most?_

Caedmon scarcely bit back his retort the crown prince could not have been at his weakest with a Dragon Rider alive and facing his own grandfather. A dragon's pride morphed into shameful arrogance without human reason to temper it. A duine-arach avoided others for good reason during their most shameful times of the year. He could still not force out the apology propriety demanded. The insult still burned too fresh.

His mate took it in stride. She glanced wistfully out the window and to the growing gloom beyond. _Almost dark enough for our little nighttime flight. Gods forbid anyone but me openly look upon our prince in all of his primal magnificence._

He rumbled at the compliment and the suggestiveness behind it. But also to help disguise the growl of his belly. His appetite, so disturbed by his dawning arachtide, had asserted itself with a vengeance. He could really go for another damned cow. The entire one.

The black dragon upon their balcony put all such thoughts on hold. Their archway was Willed in such a way that provided a clear view of the outside without allowing anyone to peer in and disturb their privacy.

 _I'm sure Ciar just comes to report the Rider and his pet were executed,_ Myrna said gently. _Let me send him away._

Caedmon growled and shook his head. He could scent the black dragon's anxiety from here and saw it in the tense lines of his stance. _If that were the case it would have been Brede before us. Something's wrong.  
_

He padded past his mate to Will Ciar inside. Nothing happened. Only then did he remember a dragon's wild magic was utterly unreliable without human intent to narrow and focus it. With he huffed he slunk aside for Myrna to work her Will instead.

"Ciar," she greeted smoothly as the black dragon bowed to them both. "What news do you bring?"

"Mixed tidings, my prince and princess," Ciar said carefully.

Caedmon snarled. _Oh, get on it with it!_

Ciar blinked bemusedly at him and then answered with the blatant honesty a dragon could at least respect. "Very well, my prince. When we faced the Rider on Vroengard Brede stayed her hand because the boy had the eyes of Marit Standa. She returned her suspicions to the Righ who in turn ordered the boy and his beast brought before him. He has just recognized the Rider, Eragon, as his blood and claimed him for your clan. Brede is seeing him and his dragon to their chambers now."

If Caedmon had not already lost his self-control he would have done so then and submitted to arachtide. Instead he turned his rage and disbelief and betrayal upon his room. His flames guttered out on furniture warded against such fire. The furniture and tapestries had no such protection from his whipping tail and slashing claws.

As soon as his temper was spent Caedmon felt like collapsing in shame from such a lapse in judgement. Myrna padded to his side to nuzzle him regardless. Ciar, the picture of propriety, averted his gaze and stood like nothing had happened.

"My mother," Caedmon wanted to keen. "How could she?"

Fortunately his words failed him and nothing came out but a rasping moan. The Righ had stripped Be- his mot- _the half-heart_ of half her soul and declared her dead to them all long ago. The last, pitiful part of her had died not that long after. Caedmon had felt her final death, one that would forever deny her a place in the stars. He should have exhausted his rage and grief decades realization she had survived to whelp a human bastard had torn the scabs open anew.

"We all know how this is likely to end," Myrna murmured.

Caedmon silently agreed. Merciful his grandfather was not. The boy was not duine-arach in truth. The Righ had denied his own daughter an easy death in favor of the most slow and humiliating manner their kind could devise. No doubt he meant one last grasp at vengeance at the lost living proof of such treachery, a human Rider that dared claim royal blood.

* * *

Brede did not escort them back through the grand hallway of warring serpents and weredragons. Instead she led them up a winding staircase. The center stair was dragon-sized, wide and high-stepped. On either side were those for human-shaped climbers, far narrower with far more steps. It took Eragon six steps for every one Saphira scaled.

Eragon wished he could just climb upon Saphira's back and save her the effort of slowing down for him. Surely Brede could cover more ground if she shifted to her own dragon body, especially if she had just led them out an archway and flown them to their destination.

There were no true doors in the fortress but there were stone doorways that operated much like those in the prison had. Eragon's hope of escape diminished even further. He had no idea what sort of magic the weredragons used to control them. Without his magic he could not force his way through solid stone without a chisel and years of unerring patience.

Their chambers were not sparse by any stretch of the imagination. The walls were adorned with lavish tapestries; dun-colored stallions galloping beside the sea, dolphins racing each other on the surf, a peregrine falcon in full dive. There was an oaken shelf of books that dominated one wall and a matching wardrobe for the other. Off to one side was a dragon-sized bed set into the floor. Eragon took an experimental step upon it and found it like walking upon a cloud. A quick peek into the washroom revealed neither he nor Saphira had to worry about choosing a corner for their new gilded cell.

Brede strode past them to the stone set within an archway. She raised a hand and frowned. The barrier thinned until nothing remained. She inhaled the fresh sea air with satisfaction.

"No one sees in," she told them carefully. "Let servants know if you want change. The... _damain, a leabaidh."_ She gestured to the bed without blankets. "Holds fire. Warm as you want. Servants come later with food."

 _Why?_ Saphira demanded, though the weredragon's mind was warded off. _Why give us all this?_

Brede sighed and muttered something in her language that was clearly a curse. Her blue eyes found Eragon's. "Because of you, Eragon."

"I'm a hostage he wants treated well?" he finished archly.

Brede cocked her head at the word 'hostage' before she growled and shook her head. "No. The Righ is... _damain. Mo seann-seanair._ The Righ is your _seann-seanair._ "

She looked hopefully at him. Eragon blinked back in bemusement. When she requested access to his mind he granted it to her. At least she had asked for permission when she could easily burned through whatever defenses he had.

Of all the visions she could have sent, she sent one of a tree. He stood at its roots. She attached _mathair_ and _athair_ to the two low-lying branches above his head.

"Mother and father," he whispered in horror. Had the Righ encountered Morzan before and bear a special grudge against his offspring?

But Brede only added these translations beneath her own language before traveling up the maternal side of the tree. His contribution of 'grandfather' was swiftly added to _seanair_ and otherwise ignored. He did not have time to ponder the oddly familiar word before Brede moved on to _seanmhair._ Above 'grandmother' appeared a name - Beline Ruadhluan. Eragon's eyebrows rose when Brede even supplied an image of her, that a of young woman with fierce features, pale hair, and his eyes.

Eragon knew Selena's mother had been named Beline, daughter of none, and that he and his mother shared her eyes. She had died long before his birth. Uncle Garrow had never spoke of his own mother beyond that. When Eragon was a little boy some of the village children used to sneer she was a witch that had eaten her family's hearts and taken them all as thralls. They had called Eragon a witch boy too until Roran and his friends, already big and strapping boys for their age, had put an end to things.

Above Beline's head appeared two more branches. His great-grandmother, his _sinn-seanmhair,_ became Marit Standa. Eragon blinked at the name and the image's obvious similarities to Brede Standa. Beline shared her mother's eyes, _his_ eyes.

His _seann-seanair,_ his great-grandfather, was Ardanach Ruadhluan. His face was the Righ's.

Eragon sharply wrenched his mind away from Brede's, building his defenses denial by denial. Brede weathered his spluttered protests with gentle pity that only inflamed him further.

His fucking oath prevented his magic so he funneled his fury into his fists and wordless screams. Brede quietly took her leave and he shouted impotently after her, for his fucking oaths chained him and Saphira to the very room. The furniture proved damn durable to even a Rider's enhanced strength.

When his anger at the gods fucking him over once again had burned itself out, Eragon collapsed on the feather-bed in a numb heap. He did not stir when Saphira padded over to curl around him and envelop him within her wings.

 **And now we know where Eragon and his family get their existential angst from :D Ah, the era of relying upon half-assed translations from Google Translate and other websites is almost at an end, because he and Saphira are getting dragged into this shit kicking and screaming.**

 **Go and look up Vantablack, one of the darkest, light-absorbing materials humanity has created it. It's not black, it's a shard of black hole that somehow seems to swallow the light around it. That's the difference between the serpentine creatures in the mural and the one-eyed black dragon. Yes, surely this huge and intricate mural means nothing to the daonna-arach whatsoever beyond artistic appeal :p**

 **As seen as from Caedmon's little... predicament, this weredragon shit isn't going to be as straightforward as shifting back and forth whenever you damn well please. Overtime we'll be seeing more reasons why Ardanach might have been willing to give Eragon the smallest ghost of a chance instead of executing him on the spot. After all, beggars can't be choosers...**


	6. The True and The False

**This chapter I needed to really wrestle with. But, now that we get some certain bits of exposition out of the way...**

Eragon's privileges as gre... guest did not extend to the right of refusing visitors. Far too soon after Brede's departure Saphira snarled at the entrance of another weredragon. Her response was an unimpressed sniff.

Not about to hide behind Saphira's wing like a boy behind his mother's skirts Eragon mustered up what dignity he had left and faced the newcomer. Without access to healing magic his hands were battered from where he had futilely punched against the furniture and stone walls though he had least picked the splinters out.

The honey-brown she-dragon surveyed the few dents Eragon had dealt to the wardrobe and the tapestry he'd torn down. Her warm brown gaze flicked down to his bloodied knuckles. Then she fixed him with the sternest look of motherly disapproval Eragon had personally witnessed since Aunt Marian.

The dragon became a moderately plump woman with the same honey hair. Despite her no nonsense brown dress and severely braided hair she carried herself like a commander. Perhaps she was one after all for a small army of serving girls scurried into the chambers when she barked an order. Their seemingly small frames belied their true strength for the massive platters they carried looked like they could have crushed someone if dropped. Eragon was not pleased to notice many were his height if not slightly taller. Why did these people run so tall?

One by one the serving girls placed their platters upon the floor, briefly baring their necks to him before their attention slid elsewhere. A dark-haired girl transformed into a coal-gray dragon to delicately rehang the tapestry upon its stand. Some huddled over the dents in the wardrobe, running their hands over the wood while the air shimmered with power. When they withdrew their hands only a small discoloration left in the wood hinted at past damage. Another hustled out and returned with a steaming basin of water.

The plump woman hefted the basin into her own grip and fearlessly approached a Rider who stood by his dragon's side. Saphira rumbled a soft warning. The woman returned it with a curt look well used to quailing those twice Saphira's size.

She set the basin down and dipped a rag into it. Eragon presented his hands without complaint. It's not like she or her servants were responsible for anything in his predicament except making sure they didn't starve.

"Erna Suther," was all the introduction given before she wrapped the steaming rag around his hands and held them firm. Sweat beaded his neck from the heat pressed against his bare skin. Eragon clenched his teeth. When he felt broiled alive, Erna removed the rag to reveal only slightly pinkened skin where he had torn it open in his futile rage against the furniture.

"Thank you," he said, hoping his tone conveyed earnest gratitude that transcended the language barrier.

Erna scrutinized him, gaze unreadable. Then she dipped her head, bent down to grab the basin, and turned pointedly to the door. The serving girls hastened after her like ducklings.

Saphira sniffed at the long line of platters, all hewn from study oak, left behind. She passed stews, an entire roasted sheep, and a dozen other dishes to sniff at the last bowl, where red berries floated upon white liquid.

 _Little one, this is the only one without meat._

Eragon's mouth watered as he beheld their bounty, a feast so formidable he doubted Saphira at her most ravenous could ever down it all. He had sustained himself on salted fish for what seemed an eternity, and that last meal had been a lifetime ago. Then he remembered exactly how he was related to the one who had surely provided him with such temptation.

Not about to let the gods damned Righ win this battle, Eragon purposefully picked around the meat. They were supplemented by vegetables; carrots, turnips, onions, leeks, the same hearty ingredients the villagers in Carvahall used he could still appreciate without guilt. The porridges and flatbreads were still steeped in decadent flavor that had steeped into them. He picked at salty curds sprinkled over birds that were definitely not chicken. The slimy green leaves floating in a broth resembled seaweed. A curious bite revealed it _was._

One bite of a smoked sheep was so hot Eragon spat it out immediately. It was not how it had been cooked, but the bits of spicy herb that glazed it. The burning sensation remained long after he downed cold porridge to rid himself of it. Saphira took an experimental lick and devoured the lamb whole.

He snorted. "Figures only a fire-breather can appreciate it."

Saphira patiently let him pick his offerings from each dish before she devoured the rest without remorse. She rumbled in contentment. _Sheep are a bit gamey in their own right but if I'd known what cooking could accomplish I'd have ordered you to do it for me months ago._

Eragon's lip quirked as he inspected the last bowl. The contents smelled faintly of sour milk but the consistency was too thick. "Without the grain and green things to make the real meat stretch further, I'm sure."

She cocked her head at him. _Did you not see their teeth?_

He arched a wry brow. "How could I not notice the fangs?"

 _Not the front teeth, stone-head. Even plain humans like you have canines for tearing into meat, however small and pathetic they might be. Your back ones are for grinding plants._ Saphira opened her mouth to reveal sharp, glistening teeth set even in the back. _Their molars are the same, even in dragon form._

Her Rider let the conversation die by taking an experimental sip of the white... dairy product. Slightly sour, but with a sweetness that lingered on his tongue. Eragon raised the bowl to his lips and consumed it all down to the last raspberry on top. Despite the toll they had taken on their dinner, some plates were more than half-full, for the cooks had apparently overestimated the hunger of one simple human.

Hunger sated, Eragon's gaze drifted to the bed. For now his rage had exhausted itself. He wished only for a sleep undisturbed by dreams.

Once more he settled down and Saphira coiled herself around him. He curled against her side, the rhythmic rise and fall of her breathing almost in time to the faint hush of the sea on the rocks below. It did not take long for them to drift away into oblivion.

* * *

Eragon and Saphira both grumbled when Erna Suther and her girls returned far too damn early the next morning to clear away their plates and deliver a hearty breakfast. Not only did they bring food, but armfuls of clothes that were stowed away in his wardrobe. Erna expectantly held out a rich red tunic embroidered in silver out to him.

"No thank you," he said pointedly. He recognized the Righ's colors and was determined to not willingly wear them.

Erna's stare vowed she was ready to strip and change him like a stubborn child. Cheeks burning he shed his itchy woolen tunic for the one in her hands. He was surprised at how smooth it was against his skin. Not coarse wool, but finely woven linen. Despite the fineness of the fabric it was soft from frequent use. Eragon was satisfied that it couldn't have been the Righ's. It was too small for his current frame and far too young to ever have been won by one so old and bitter.

Eragon was displeased at how loose the tunic gathered at his shoulders and how close it trailed to his knees. Every damn weredragon had a stature that resonated with a dragon's power. Erna held up a thread to measure for alterations. Then she bowed and ushered her servants out.

Once they were gone Eragon ripped off the damn tunic and wolfed down his breakfast shirtless.

He wondered over to properly inspect their washroom, divided from the rest of their quarters by a stone wall. The dragon-sized pool carved into the floor dominated the room. Shallow steps allowed easy access for a smaller bather. Two sets of iron knobs, made for two very different hands, were set into the wall. Their runes faintly glowed. Turning the left knob loosed a cold stream of water into the pool while the right was boiling hot.

Eragon relished the chance to immerse himself and be fully rid the prison's stink. No sooner did he step out of the tub did Saphira claim it for herself. With a happy rumble she cranked the hot water and submerged herself up to her nostrils. Steam billowed from the bath.

Leaving the she-dragon to her own devices Eragon dressed in a blue tunic and trousers.

In the morning light he saw their archway did not look out to open ocean. On the horizon sat a large green island. Squinting, he could just make out the shapes of distant dragons. Inhaling the salt air and suddenly no able to stand the sight of freedom so far away, he instead wrenched his gaze away to inspect the bookshelves.

His eye fell upon the most well-worn book on the shelf. Its leather bind was cracked and embossed letters faded. He did not realize how large the book is until he lifted it from its place, a size more easily handled by dragon paws. Eragon opened to a random page. The letters were large and simple in their grace. He did not recognize a one, but some looked vaguely familiar to those of the human script he first learned to read. There was a strange gloss to the black ink that made the letters shimmer when they caught the light. He brushed a hand against the words and...

 _...stood in a dark field. Torches burned in the hands of servants on either side of men in fine armor and richly made robes. One by one they knelt to lay their swords at the feet of their queen. Her unbound hair shimmered silver and her eyes blazed like stars. Her men looked not up at her when they pledged their allegiance, but with fearful reverence of the full moon just above her head..._

Eragon drew back his hand as if burned. The air, once crisp and smelling of smoke from the torches, was suddenly bereft without them. The daylight was almost blinding. Saphira stood over him in alarm.

 _Are you alright, little one?_

"Aye." He gingerly returned the book to its proper place. "I was just dragged into a memory."

Saphira inspected the shelf and chose a different book. Lacking a weredragon's thumb, she was not as dexterous, but the book's size was easy for her to handle. She placed a page on its pages. Her eyes became distant and glassy. Then she snorted and shook her head.

 _Ancestral memories printed on pages. Only dragon-men could devise such madness._

Servants entered to clean away their breakfast. Saphira watched them warily. Eragon shelved her book, feeling as if he had disturbed another's property.

The servants were not alone. In the threshold stood a tall, gaunt man whose tunic trailed to his knees. His brown hair was sheared short and his stance rigid. Dark gold eyes blazed in a face whose frown lines and scrunched forehead were wearing into wrinkles. Beneath his gaze the maids grabbed their platters and scurried out. He greeted them with a perfunctory bowed head and show of the neck but did not ask their permission before entering.

"I am Oisin Laoghaire," he answered in a thick brogue. "The Righ wills me to teach you the tongue of the daonna-arach."

At the mention of the Righ Eragon wanted to refuse out of principal. Then he remembered their circumstances. They had nothing but books in an alien alphabet and servants that did not share a word in common with them. The language barrier exasperated him. Privately he and Saphira agreed to not put up a fuss.

"So be it," he said curtly.

"Lower your shields," Oisin ordered.

Eragon did so warily, tensed to lash out the moment the weredragon overstepped his bounds. Yet Oisin sent only words over their connection, contexts and pronunciations and sibilant tones.

 _Tha mise Saphira._ The thought was musical over their bond. Out of curiosity, she opened her mouth, trying to shape her tongue into how Oisin managed speech in dragon form. She managed only a strangled growl.

"You will never truly speak," Oisin said bluntly. "You lack the fine control of a true duine-arach." His gaze fell expectantly on Eragon. "Now you."

Tha mise Eragon. I am Eragon. One couldn't get simpler than that.

Eragon opened his mouth. His tongue tripped over the first two syllables. No matter how many times he copied Oisin or the scholar drilled the movements directly into his mind, he failed to sound anything close to a true weredragon's pronunciation.

Oisin recoiled in revulsion at the mere thought of 'weredragon' seeping across their connection. "Duine-arach!" he snarled.

"Dune-yeah arrak," Eragon obliged. He scowled up at Oisin, for the man was tall and skinny as a sapling. "It's no use. I'm no more one of your kind than Saphira is. This is the closest I'll ever sound."

"The lowly blood muddying your speech is no excuse." Oisin's eyes flashed. "Practice. Rise above it. All will come in time."

For a moment he seemed sympathetic. Then he proceeded to ruthlessly drill simple phrase after simple phrase into their heads. When he took his leave hours later, they were too busy rubbing their throbbing heads to wish him good fucking riddance. Eragon's skull felt ready to split at the seams.

"Are you hungry, my prince?" Erna ventured from the threshold. "We bring food."

Eragon was about to ask when she'd learned his language before dimly realizing he understood hers. "No, thank you," he slurred.

She and her serving girls stared blankly at him until he pointedly shook his head, cursing his gods damned tongue all the while.

* * *

"Faithless, feckless, mud-fucking whore!"

Niall rolled his eyes. On the opposite side of the gods damned island and he could still make out his father's rant word for word as if still at the castle. They could probably hear his raging roars across the channel, all the way on Crown Isle.

Not that his father's fury would ever amount to anything productive. Berach Ruadhluan could never raise a claw against his own brother. Even if that brother had just acknowledged the mud-blooded changeling bastard of an outcast as kin.

"Maybe the Righ finally went senile," Donagh mused as he picked his teeth with a claw. "It's like he's just asking for everyone to turn to the Knoths."

Eachann snorted as he licked the last remnants of blood from his lips. "Don't be stupid. The Righ's crazy, alright, but crazy like a fox. Every clan-lord with a brain knows Prince Caedmon is the future of the Isles anyway. It's not like the Righ is doing much more damage to his reputation by bringing the Rider into the public eye. He can at least drag the Knoths down with him.

"You're a fucking idiot," Arne snarled. "Caedmon and Amleth Loth are _twins_! It screws them both over!"

Doran's gaze purposefully went to Niall. "But not the only Ruadhluan born this generation... so far."

"Caedmon and Myrna still have decades to bear heirs, and they're the Righ's direct descendants," Donagh retorted to his twin.

Niall snapped the cow skull between his teeth. Those daonna-arach loyal to the royal clan still had high hopes of more direct members. Myrna was still a few years shy of fifty. Niall's own surprise birth not that long ago had proven Berach and his mate still fertile.

Niall was his mother's miracle and his father's pride. Not even his four oldest and truest friends knew he was the last best hope for the Ruadhluans. His mother had whispered the bitter truth into his ear only the year prior, when she had finally deemed him old enough to bear the burden.

"It doesn't matter how distant a cousin the mud man is to me," he growled at last. "His very existence is a threat to our own."

"Until the Lord Moon judges," Doran murmured, his words an echo of the Righ's declaration. "It's a problem that solves itself."

That night was nearly a month away. Niall dreaded the trial before it. His cousin Caedmon had just begun his arachtide. There was a high chance the Righ, the crown prince, and steward would all be sealed away with a bastard on the night they were needed most. His clan needed a true victory to rally behind other than simply yet another Long Night weathered. A true heir had to shine bright before the false one proved himself unworthy of the fire that burned in the heart of every duine-arach.

"I must prove myself an adult in truth," he told his companions. "I need a triumph. One not even the fucking prince consort can sniff at."

Donagh and Doran exchanged a look. Arne bared his teeth at the prospect. Only Eachann dared voice what they all thought. "Niall, we're all still barely more than half-grown. No one's actually expecting a triumph out of any of us for another decade."

"Which is why it has to be _this_ Long Night," Niall stated. He swallowed his pride and shrank to his most vulnerable, until his friends towered over him. He held out an open palm. "I must not only prove myself worthy to my clan. As the heir's heir, I must prove my clan is still worthy to shield our people against the dark. I can't do it without all four of you."

Arne was the first to shift to his level. "My prince, who am I to turn the offer of a glorious first triumph at your side?"

Donagh and Doran transformed together. "And you know that we'd follow you to the ends of the world."

Eachann was the last. Niall bore into his soul, searching for doubt, and found nothing but unwavering conviction. "I fight by your side. Until the bitter end."

"Father Sky to witness, and Mother Earth to bind," Niall said resolutely. "We slay the largest fucking abomination we can on our next Long Night or die trying."

 _"So we swear,"_ they vowed as one, in heart and mind and soul.

Beneath the sun's blazing eye they bit into their hands and pressed their naked palms together. Their blood mingled with each other's and dripped to the dirt below.

 **And so the (living) Ruadhluan clan is fully revealed: Ardanach, the Righ, the angry old thundercloud of dubious sanity. Caedmon, his grandson, the crown prince who is trying to keep shit from falling apart before he can even take the throne. Caedmon's mate, Myrna, who does her best to hold Caedmon together. Ardanach's younger brother, Berach, who does his damnedest to uphold royal authority as the king's steward. Imke, Berach's mate, whose greatest battle is replenishing a sorely depleted clan. Their son, Niall, Eragon's angry little foil. And, now, Eragon... on a trial basis.**

 **Loic, Beline's legitimate consort, and Amleth, Beline's second son, are not counted among the Ruadhluan.**

 **Next chapter: One night a month the Lord must sleep. His children are left in darkness. They fear to never see another dawn.**


	7. Moonless

**I struggled with writing this chapter for four months. And then it comes to me in two days. Muse, thou art a fickle bitch.**

Not even two full weeks among the daonna-arach and Eragon felt like tearing his hair out from the gods-damned boredom.

Oisin prioritized language over literature. Rather than teach his students the alphabet he crammed in as many words as possible into their heads each lesson. After their grueling sessions Eragon couldn't even think of opening a book for yet another nauseating round of the memories printed into the pages. He and Saphira had spent those first few lessons without much of an appetite or a will to do anything but curl up and sleep away the pain.

Though Oisin's lessons involved increasingly complex words and grammar his knowledge was no longer so overwhelming. Each day Eragon found himself better able to withstand the mental bombardment. Words wove themselves together, transforming from alien thoughts shoved into his head to another language smooth as the tongue of man or the ancient language. His tongue better learned to form the strange glides and growls. He still tripped over the words to a maddening degree, but now the servants understood him enough to get his wishes across.

The lessons also seemed to be taking their toll on Oisin. There were dark shadows beneath his eyes, dull and distant. At times he plodded through the lesson. Other times the slightest mistake could raise his ire and scales prickling across his flesh.

Then, hours before their lesson should have ended, their tutor abruptly stopped in a rant on conjugation. With a silent snarl he pressed his face into his palm.

"No more of this," he said resolutely in his native tongue. "I need rest."

As one Eragon and Saphira glanced to the window. Late afternoon light streamed in, warm and golden.

 _Why?_ she asked bluntly. _It's not even near... duv-rath yet._

 _"Dubh-thrath,"_ Oisin growled. _Dusk._ "I must sleep when I can."

Eragon frowned. Not entirely crushed by a day's worth of drilling, the faintest bit of curiosity wriggled in his mind. Over the last few days he had been absently aware of how even sensible daonna-arach like Erna were increasingly ill at ease as the new moon neared. He calculated the moon's path in his head. There was still a sliver of crescent due tonight. Why worry about the night before total darkness?

"Then our lessons continue tomorrow?" he prompted in the human tongue, not in the mood for grappling with the Word again. Early in the mornings Oisin still half-heartedly to correct Eragon's pronunciation. In the late afternoon he had given up.

Oisin gave him the scowl that meant he thought Eragon had been born under a rock. His face twisted that way whenever Eragon dared ask a question about the daonna-arach that was common sense to any that had grown up in the Isles.

"No, my prince. Then we have to prepare."

"For?"

Dull brown eyes flashed their usual dark gold. "For the Long Night."

Eragon bit back his next natural question. Spending considerable amounts of time in Du Weldenvarden and Farthen Dur had taught him the hard way to hold back brash questions. His clumsy tongue had infuriated others before for even remotely implying something of their culture was odd or outright absurd.

Perhaps the daonna-arach dreaded a moonless night the way the dwarves dreaded a coronation where a vision of their god did not appear. Legend said werewolves were chained to the whims of the moon, transforming into mindless beasts on full moon nights. There was a chance the legend had a sliver of truth, that the weredragons were somehow bound to the lunar cycle.

Oisin gave them a curt bow and took his leave. Eragon rolled his eyes after him.

"How much of their fear do you reckon is just unfounded superstition?" he muttered.

Saphira snorted. _Their_ _fear is certainly not fake. It hangs over all of them like a pall. You should have pressed him more._

Eragon bit back his first instinct to snap at her. Rage and frustration still boiled across their link. Even two souls bound as one needed more space apart than their current luxurious confines. "There's nothing stopping you from asking. He's half dragon just as much as he is half man."

She bared her fangs at him. _Do you not see the way they look at me, stone-head!? The maids look right past me or out of the corners of their eyes, as if I'm some pet about to piss on the carpet. And that Oisin... I would be less than dirt to him, if your blood did not make him hold back his disgust in front of you._

Her Rider averted his eyes. During one of those first hellish sessions Oisin had pounded kith and kin into their heads, terms for parents and siblings and bondeds and all else in a clan. Eragon had not dared ask how a weredragon princess had wound up among human peasants or of the family left behind.

Deep down, he already knew the answer. His grandmother could have been nothing more a younger, spoiled daughter that had ran off on a whim and gotten herself disowned from it. Doubtless she had many dutiful brothers and sisters for the family to pretend she no longer existed. Her human whelps were nothing but unwanted bastards, spawn that never should have existed. The clans of wild dragons were large and sprawling families, and the daonna-arach followed the same system.

And history had repeated itself for Selena and her sons.

Eragon silently stalked out to the balcony, counted under his oaths as part of their chambers. Back pointedly turned to the cavernous fortress, he scowled out to sea and the Green Isle beyond. Servants and guards watched him out of the corners of their eyes. He openly stared back, pleased when they looked away. His heart ached at how they flew in circles or from door to door, never deviating from their predestined paths. Were he in their position he would have soared into the sun and never looked back.

He sulked outside for hours until the arrival of Erna and the maids with supper lured him inside. Damn his appetite. Lunch had not been too long ago.

Saphira scarcely glanced at him before she snapped up a roasted pig and hauled it past him onto the balcony. Erna huffed at the juices trailed behind her.

"Privacy, my prince?" she suggested neutrally, for the could Will the barrier that shut out prying eyes to work both ways.

"No thank you," he grit out. Then he tore into the dishes with savagery befitting his maternal ancestors.

The servants gracefully took their leave. Eragon cracked fresh loaves of bread and gnashed on the usual boiled root and tables but could not ease out his frustrations. Not even the crunch of carrots was satisfactory.

He glared down at roasts picked around for near two weeks. Aside from the fish in their cells he had not willfully eaten meat since that horrific killing of the rabbit in Du Weldenvarden.

His eye did not fall upon generous roasts or stews, but on a humble sausage. Most animals on his family's farm had been working animals in some purpose, not slaughtered until they had aged past their prime working years. Even the chickens and cows had been spared so long as they had produced eggs and milk. The few pigs feeding at the outskirts of their farm were the exception. In autumn they had been butchered. Eragon's mind carried him back to a happier time, when Marian had still been alive, and his aunt had finally deemed him big enough to help her with readying the sausages to be spiced and stored for the winter. She had awarded him the first of the season.

Eragon tentatively bit into one. Flavor, warm and familiar, burst into his mouth. Eyes watering, he devoured the rest.

By the time Erna returned he had changed his tunic and did his best to clean up the mess. She still swept over the picked-over plates and the lingering stains with an unreadable expression.

Erna's girls scurried to clean. She knowingly lingered as the last of them departed.

Eragon inhaled deeply. "Erna."

"Yes, my prince?"

"What happens on the... Long Night?"

"The Lord Moon sleeps and we must fend without him." Erna's expression steeled when she interpreted his silence for concern. "Fear not, my prince. You have but one soul and no fires of your own. We shall keep you safe." Her gaze flicked past him. "The both of you."

She bowed and took her leave. Bemused, he watched her departure, and could not find it in his heart to tell her he could slaughter her kind by the dozens if his magic were unbound.

* * *

Saphira didn't need luxurious quarters or a bed like clouds. She had weathered far worst nights in the elements than the one she was facing now. Fighting the urge to pace the balcony like a beast in her cage, she curled up for the night, and counted the waves crashing into the rocks below.

Eragon took the hint and fell onto bed on his own, without her fires to warm it. Cursing under his breath he rose once to bundle himself in multiple tunics against the night wind. Then he slammed back down and pretended to sleep. His heaving breaths and thundering heart loudly declared otherwise.

For a moment Saphira thought to apologize first. Their captivity was wearing them both thin. Then pride demanded her to discard the notion. So many, Oisin amongst them, made it painfully clear they heeded her only because they saw her as Eragon's. Elves had near worshiped her. Even dwarves, though they grumbled about her turning on them in their sleep, at least addressed her plainly. Of course dragon-men treated her as full men did. And she would not lower herself by giving in to the one man on this gods forsaken rock that was supposed to be her partner in everything.

Movement on her right made Saphira look up. From another balcony loomed a shadow she first mistook for the Righ's, for the broad form and smoke billowing from his nostrils. But this male's eyes blazed molten gold. He snorted furiously and hurled himself from his perch. She watched him plummet to the rocks below.

Another dragon leaped from the same balcony. For a moment she first thought the female preventing a suicide attempt. Then the two slipped and whirled around the other, wings still closed, and she realized it a dance.

Side by side, the dragons fell to earth. Mere moments before they were impaled on the rocks below they snapped open their wings in the same heartbeat and soared out to sea.

Saphira's heart clenched as she watched them vanish into the night. Only in her ancestral memories had she ever seen a mated pair.

Hours crawled by. Behind her Eragon's breathing at least evened out into a restless slumber. Saphira's snatches of sleep were brief and chaotic.

There was the slightest tinge of gray on the horizon when she spotted the mated pair return. They glided easily on the coming dawn, tension gone.

But then the male's eyes caught hers. Immediately his face shut down. Then it twisted into a hateful snarl. With a jet of red-gold flame he furiously pulled away from his mate, storming onto his balcony and thundering inside. His blazing eyes were slitted as her own.

Saphira remained where she was, too proud to shrink beneath that fury and too cowed to bellow back. The she-dragon glanced helplessly after her mate. Then she sighed and directed her gaze downwards.

"Good evening," she called neutrally. "Or good morning, rather."

Digging her talons into the stonework, Saphira reluctantly opened her mind to the stranger politely requesting access. _Good morning._

She warily rose to her full height as the stranger landed beside her. Saphira was not dwarfed by daonna-arach like she was by Glaedr, but still had to crane her head upward to look the other in the eye, much like how Eragon did with men fully grown. How odd. This female was slimmer than Brede, her scales a deep rose red, and eyes warm.

"I am Myrna. Myrna Ruadhluan." With a sigh her gaze flicked upwards. "And that was Caedmon, my mate."

Ruadhluan. The Righ's clan. Saphira studied the she-dragon and saw nothing of the Righ in him, not like she had glimpsed in her mate. Caedmon must have been a son of the Righ, older brother to Eragon's errant grandmother. And, though Myrna did not look very old by daonna-arach standards, that made her Eragon's great-aunt.

Should she bow? Pride squared her shoulders.

 _I am Saphira Brightscales._ She glanced behind her to where her Rider lay in fitful dreams. _And you surely know my Rider, Eragon._

"The Righ has recognized Eragon as blood and claimed him," Myrna said. "He is clan, and so are you."

Ice chilled her veins. How exactly where weredragons created again? _He's my Rider!_

The older female stared flatly at her. "Yes. Your bonded. He is yours and you are his."

Only then did Saphira belatedly remember not every bonded pair of dragons were mates. Beyond clan bonds some nestmates forged enduring connections. A pair with far too many offspring might fine one adopted by an elder sibling or another childless adult in the clan. Even a pair of the opposite sex, completely unrelated to each other, could form a platonic bond with no urge to mate or produce eggs or their own.

Bid'daum had bonded to the first Eragon under such circumstances. The formation of the pact had purposefully altered the bond-making of unhatched dragons so as to accept only a chosen Rider.

Apparently such bonds had not been lost among the daonna-arach. Saphira heaved a silent sight of relief and hid it behind shields Myrna had not breached.

Dragons were also not ones for beating around the bush. _Your mate doesn't seem to think that way._

"You are not the source of his anger. Or your bonded." At her own disbelieving stare, Myrna quietly conceded. "Your bonded is not the _direct_ source of his anger. Only the closest thing my mate can direct his frustrations at."

 _Ah,_ Saphira said. Then she shoved her thoughts firmly behind her thickest barriers. Caedmon was furious at the little sister that had abandoned the clan to have human offspring. And the half-breed niece that had subsequently spawned a Dragon Rider by the last Forsworn. Eragon was the closest link alive to blame.

"Now is a very poor time to begin making amends between us." Myrna uneasily averted her gaze to the sliver of moon dipping below the horizon. "Perhaps later, if the Lord Moon wills it. Farewell, Saphira Ruadhluan. May we meet once more as the Mother's."

 _The same to you,_ she said in bemusement as Myrna disappeared after her mate, because she did not know the other half to what seemed a common closing.

What had Oisin told her about the weredragon gods? Saphira tried to remember, for the dwarven mythologies had put her off the subject of deities altogether.

Dimly she recalled something about some mated pair, a male sky and a female earth. Everything in the world had been born from them in some form or another. Were not weredragons born of both?

The headache tired her. Unable to take any more riddles Saphira curled up and finally fell asleep bathed in dawn's golden fires.

* * *

If he did not awake on his own it was usually by servants bringing breakfast. Instead was by frantic dragons outside his window.

Sloughing off so many of the extra tunics he had donned, Eragon padded outside to watch in bemusement as so many dragons below him were busily lighting braziers and closing off doorways below. Usually at dawn Crown Isle was uncovered to embrace the new day.

So used was he to Saphira's presence beside him that his bleary mind only then remembered their fight from the night before. Eragon cleared his throat and did not shrink back from the blazing eyes upon him.

"I'm sorry," he blurted out. "I should have paid better attention to how they were treating you." He pulled his teeth into a bitter grimace. "If you're a beast, then I'm a simpleton child to them."

 _It was a stupid thing to fight over in the first place, little one,_ Saphira said gently. _I'm sorry to let the resentment fester like it did._

Side by side they watched the morning sun climb higher. Their breakfast, if it could still be called such, was delivered late. Saphira sniffed at simple gruel and sausages.

"Forgive us, my prince," Erna said. "I'm afraid for most of us here it's a _latha na traisg."_ A fast day, he surmised.

"Unless you want the fire-wine, my prince," the dark-haired girl, Lillias, offered guilelessly. "Then-"

 _"FOOL!"_ Erna roared, scales erupting from her face as she turned upon the girl. "He is _ain-duisgte!_ He'd burn from the inside out!"

Lillias groveled before both Erna and Eragon as she tearfully stammered out an apology. Eragon hastily accepted it. Then Erna furiously banished the girl from the room.

"Our burden is not yours, my prince," Erna said when she had composed herself and drawn her humanity around her like a cloak. Her honey gaze flicked to Saphira. "Nor is it yours, little dragon. Eat, rest, and pray. We'll leave you your privacy."

They finished their meal in speculative silence. Then Saphira cleaned her scales while Eragon readied for what promised to be an eventful day. He pulled on a soft blue tunic he had worn before, its sleeves now hemmed in to fit his smaller frame.

Not even an hour later, as the early afternoon dragged on, their confinement was interrupted by one they had not seen since their first day in these damned quarters. Brede Standa stood in human form, every inch covered in thick leather armor, and such a helm beneath her arm. At her side was buckled a sword. The thin strip of blade visible above the sheath was pale as milk-glass and shimmered in the sunlight.

Her partner Ciar greeted them with a perfunctory show of the neck before gliding past them and onto their balcony. In a brazier they had never seen lit before he raised his hand and kindled fire that burned hot and white even in broad daylight. When he crossed over the threshold the barrier behind him thickened, the sunlight and sea breeze dying as stone grew solid and firm once more.

"It is time," Brede said heavily. "Eragon and Saphira Ruadhluan, the Righ bids you both to come with me."

Such was her grimness that they did not question her. Eragon still shuddered as he crossed the threshold into the hall, a part of him convinced he was about to drop dead when he did.

Instead they descended down through a castle preparing for siege. Barrier after barrier was raised behind them. Dragons in clanking metal armor raised flames in every brazier. Down halls he heard the whetting of blades and sharpening of claws. Eragon raised his brows at the sight of bleating sheep being herded down into the castle's heart. Dragons hauling bags and barrels followed in their wake.

As the smooth floors gave way to rough stone beneath their feet they parted ways with the food and flocks. Despite being deep in the isle's core the air was hot and dry, for that bright white fire blazed in every brazier and left no room for dank or dark.

At last the winding passage gave way to a massive cavern. Eragon gaped up into the single shimmering eye of the massive black dragon statue that encompassed the chamber, the very same from the battle scene depicted in the hallway down to the throne room. Only now did he recognize it as a depiction of how the daonna-arach envisioned the moon, the eye of a massive dragon called only Triath Luan, the Lord Moon.

They were not alone. Many knelt before the idol in fervent prayer. There were warriors, armed and armored, but far outnumbered by what Eragon numbly realized were civilians. There were elders, shrunken and blind. Huddled in a pile of skin and scales were little children, humans scarcely more than toddlers and dragons the size of large dogs.

His heat clenched at the sound of a squalling infant. His eye found a couple, a broad-shouldered man with his arms around a slender woman and the bawling babe between them. The pair lowered their heads and met in a long, fierce kiss. Then the mother gently touched her forehead against her infant's, before passing the bundle her mate's arms.

It was the woman that pulled away, soft curves and glistening eyes giving way to iron scales and a brutal snout. Her child wailed louder and grasped after her with pudgy arms. But the mother did not turn. The child's wails grew loud and shrill. The father winced and scrambled to hold the furious bundle of scales and butter-soft claws scrabbling against his hold.

Ciar stopped at the threshold, but Brede stubbornly led them to the base of the throng. Most were too concerned with their prayers and farewells to notice them.

"Here is where you stay until the Righ Wills it," she said firmly. Then she dipped her head to them. "May we meet once more as the Mother's."

"And burn all the brighter as the Father's," murmured one nearby, sightless eyes turning in the direction.

Then Brede pulled away, meeting Ciar at the threshold before vanishing with other warriors giving their farewells.

Eragon and Saphira quickly claimed a quiet corner away from the crowd. The daonna-arach gave them a wide berth. More noncombatants trickled in as several warriors remained vigilant near the entrance. So many expectant gazes fell upon it.

Finally descended the Righ himself, the crowd all shifting to give him a path clean through to the idol. With his arrival the air grew hot and heavy. Every adult and older child in the room fell prone and bared their necks to him, with their hands to their hearts.

The Righ plodded by without truly seeing any of them. His silver eyes never strayed from the dark threshold at the statue's base.

In the Righ's wake marched another, a dragon the slightest bit smaller, but no less battle-hardened. Beneath armor that shivered like silver his scales were iron to the Righ's storm clouds, and eyes the deep same gray. Their brutal features made them nothing less than brothers.

Where the Righ plodded like one facing the gallows, his brother was a veteran about to charge once more unto the breach. While the Righ quietly slipped into the shadows, the darker dragon turned to face the crowd.

"The Righ descends!" he rumbled. "He rises!"

"He rises!" their kingdom bellowed back. "He rises!"

When both dragons disappeared into the dark so did the tension grow in those left behind. Most huddled before the Lord Moon or small candles that burned like stars, whispering fervently to them. Eragon's ears catch snatches of prayers to gods and loved ones, tenderly invoked one name at a name. Guiltily he averted his eyes from them.

"Fret not, little one," a wizened grandmother murmured to the girl trembling beneath her wings. "Your brothers rise. On this night they burn brightest just for you."

Eragon searched the sea for familiar faces. Erna and Oisin were not among them, not even gentle serving girls like Lillias.

One dragon, not a warrior, furiously paced the side of the chamber. His scales were brilliant gold and his eyes molten. He huffed and snarled. The daonna-arach gave him an even wider berth than they did Eragon and Saphira. Adults did not even look his way, and cuffed and chided children that did.

 _Why in the seven hells is he in here and not outside with the rest of them?_ Eragon muttered privately. _He looks ready to fight his way through the mountain itself._

Saphira's eye surreptitiously tracked the golden male, her own thoughts unusually closed off. _His eyes, little one. Look at his eyes._

Eragon risked a peek. In the brightness the male's eyes were furious pits of molten gold, his pupils little more than thin slits. Occasionally in his track the dragon stopped, snarling and gnashing his teeth as every muscle in his body shivered and spasmed. Then his furious pacing resumed with even more smoke darkening the air above his head.

"He's trying to force it," muttered an elder near to them. "The fool."

"Someone should stop him before he pushes himself too far," murmured another.

None of them rose to do so. Even when their teeth collectively gritted at one spasm so violent it ended with a pained keen.

Finally the father rose, leaving his squalling infant in the arms of another. Where the crowd thinned at the edge of the room he finally shifted. Something about his shape was off. Only then did Eragon realize his dragon shape had but one wing. The other was a charred stump.

He murmured something to the golden dragon, voice low and soothing. At last the other male halted in his pacing, sides heaving. For a moment he looked ready to attack the other dragon. Then some of the wild light finally died in his eyes.

With a curt snort the golden dragon retreated to simmer in the corner opposite Eragon and Saphira's. The father quietly returned to soothing his son.

Hours dragged by. The tension in the room rose, prayers growing quieter and more fervent as the daonna-arach waited for some unknown storm to break.

The silence was shattered by a terrible shriek. Shrieking inconsolably, one old woman lunged forward. Several in dragon shape rushed to subdue her before her lashing tail and claws could harm the others nearby. Warriors tensed, wings half-unfurling and swords drawn as their gazes snapped toward the threshold. Even the more able-bodied moved to put the elders and children behind them. The golden male sprung before them, as if even his great bulk could shield them all from whatever was about to surge in.

Eventually the sobs quieted as the old dragon sunk into herself, gaze slack and fire extinguished. The crowd grew silent as the crypt in breathless anticipation. One by one their eyes flicked to Triath Luan's feet.

The Righ shambled forth, eyes dull and gray. The celebratory cries of his people withered and died in their throats as he bared his fangs at them. Still the sea bowed and parted for him. At the Righ's paws followed his brother, weary and triumphant.

"Adhar Athair wakes!" he proclaimed. "Adhar Athair rises!"

Murmurs rippled through the crowd as their Righ stalked through. Upon his exit they erupted into true cheers, deep and bellowing. The golden male took advantage of the chaos to slink away first.

Some fell before the feet of Triath Luan in gratitude. Others surged forth to greet the new day. Their oaths binding them to the room, Eragon and Saphira lingered awkwardly at the threshold.

At last Brede and Ciar came to collect them. Eragon was almost relieved when they were escorted back to their chambers. From their winding way up he knew Brede deliberately took side passages to avoid the bulk of the crowds. Still they passed others in the halls. Most gaped at them like animals in a menagerie. A few curled their lips in open contempt, no matter their form. Apparently now that the night had passed they had remembered their prejudices.

Eragon ignored them in favor of inspecting their surroundings. Servants now doused flames and opened up windows and doors one by one to the dawn. They had a good view of exactly what the isle had weathered last night.

 _Nothing looks touched,_ Saphira murmured privately to him.

Eragon's first response was to blame superstition. Then he remembered the gold dragon's desperate helplessness, the old woman's chilling cries, and held his tongue.

"Were we lucky?" he ventured aloud. "To be so untouched?"

Ciar stiffened without looking their way. But Brede turned to face them, eyes bleak and blunt.

"Aye," she agreed. _"We_ were."

* * *

His oath was ash in his mouth as reports of the confirmed dead trickled in one by one.

Torin Standa had lost none of his. Of course Soraid Knoth, hoary old bitch, hadn't either. Cullach Cromaig's bitterest losses had been on his western isles. As for the Lord of the West himself...

Herulf Holgata had lost both his sons along with the best and brightest of his clan. His scouts were still confirming the devastation on his outer isles.

Whale Isle had never been large or important even in the grand scheme of the Western Isles, but the Hvalmans had still been hospitable hosts to those whalers braving the open ocean. Yesterday their clan had numbered twenty. Now Arne and his great-grandmother were the last of their blood.

Berach Ruadhluan had been the Righ's last and greatest guard last night. Now, as warden and steward, he solemnly received reports and gave condolences the Righ and Caedmon were both unable to. The crown prince's arachtide had not yet broken. It was a miracle the Righ had awoken at all.

As his father's son, Caedmon's only true heir, Niall had long to remain by his sire's side and act the part even as he inwardly seethed at how fickle the fucking Serpents could be. Two months of peace, and then they had emerged to near shatter the west.

But his mother's burning eye fell upon him. Niall was near a man grown. He should not have feared a female. Inwardly he trembled at the very real possibility she was about to haul him off by the scruff like a disobedient pup.

Mother and son departed the public eye with grace that befitted the royal clan, the blood of Sparr and Amalia. In private quarters she raised a paw and swatted him across the face. Shock more than pain made Niall stumble with the blow. His mother had never raised a hand against him but for a few chiding shakes as a naughty child.

"You complete and utter fool!" Imke Ruadhluan snarled. "Courting death like that and dragging your friends down with you!"

Niall hissed, already knowing the traitor. _"Eachann!"_

He quailed back when Imke's teeth snapped down inches from his face. "Eachann was a good and dutiful son! He told his grandfather exactly what he should have. Swearing on the sun and earth to slay a Serpent or die trying? What in all the _hells_ were you thinking!?"

"The Rider-"

"Yes!" Imke snapped. "The Rider. The bastard mud-man in Caedmon's old chambers. _Beline's_ old chambers. And, had the stars not smiled on us last night, you would have left him the only heir of his generation!"

Niall wanted to retort the mud-man would burn from the inside out long before a true fire ever kindled in his heart of hearts. But his blood froze at the slightest ghost of a chance that it could. Which was why he so desperately needed to prove himself a true duine-arach, one capable of protecting the clan and kingdom, and one day all of creation with it.

His unspoken desperation flowed across their link. His mother drew back, pity and understanding banking her fires. But not her conviction. Her mind only steeled herself upon his.

"Prince Sioltach," she intoned. Niall drew back as if burned. "He was about your age when he thought to prove himself before his sire that Long Night. And by dawn the main line was dead, for King Arran chose to follow his son into death than return to us."

Shame made Niall shrink into himself. He fell before his mother and begged forgiveness, for his arrogance had nearly cost their clan its last great hope.

Imke shifted as he did, gently taking his face in human hands so he met her gaze. "Oh, my son. In time you shall have your chance. You know whose blood flows through their veins, the burden you shall bear. So do they. Your death shall find _you,_ and you must be ready to cast it back into the night."

For such was the curse of their clan. It was their fault the Lord Moon knew weakness and weariness. For one night a month his burden was theirs to bear. Or die and leave sun and stars alike to be swallowed by shadow.

 **Eragon's daily mental bombardment with a foreign language is not helping him healthily process yet another curve ball fate has thrown him in regards to family. At this state he has no idea about the truth behind either Selena's or Beline's circumstances, and is projecting his own fears and insecurities on the situation. Considering his scandalous beginnings in canon, and adding a scandalous grandmother on top of it here, there must have been some rumors happening in that closed little village of his during his childhood.**

 **FtA's clan system is based off my structure of wild dragon society for _Sunrise._ Given how long-lived wild dragons are and how Bid'Daum naturally bonded to the first Eragon, I figured there was a natural bonding system in place for wild dragons reworked to suit the pact. Mated monogamous pairs allow optimal raising of numerous clutches without allowing one frisky male to go out and make every clutch in a general area half-siblings. Platonic and family bonds allow for connections that strengthen clans and safely raise extraneous hatchlings without adding to the problem.**

 **Brede and Ciar are platonically bonded. In daonna-arach society there remains a precedent in place for a dragon-Rider to be accepted, no matter how much they revile both Riders and Riders' dragons.**

 **Of course, now that the new moon is one rather pressing hurdle is out the way, the characters in the know can now freak out about the other ticking time bomb ;)**


	8. Foundations

**WARNING: Two part chapter ahoy!**

 **Two days ago I suddenly felt the urge to track down that damn obscure Irish movie about a magical horse and two boys I watched once as a little girl a very long damned time ago. Turns out it had Gabriel Byrne (and Ellen Barkin) and was so rich in poignant Irish mythology I was possessed to write this chapter. And it turned into a beast. For flow and sanity I divided this sucker up into two, so double update today!**

Well into her autumn years, but so late into her life she was closer to the stars than Talamh Mathair, she knew the secrets of the Earth-Mother perhaps better than any duine-arach alive. She had birthed babes, used herb and Will to steal back souls from the brink of death, and had eased them into the final sleep so that they might one day rise again.

Airmid supposed many believed her blessed to serve as the Righ's personal druid. Where he drove even his own brother from his chambers, she alone was summoned to his side. With the queen consort long dead she was undoubtedly the duine-arach alive who knew him best. Yet she did not have the Righ's ear, for the Righ heeded no council but his own. Instead hers was the burden of keeping his soul from slipping from the mortal coil entirely.

When his little brother had at last been driven from his chambers the last of the Righ's fire sputtered and died. He collapsed upon his bed, eyes glazed and gasping for breath.

Airmid's keen hearing warily regarded his shallow breaths and faint, fluttering heartbeats. He was now over two hundred years old, into that twilight time of such uncertainty. Some rapidly aged and decayed in a scant few years after. Those who cleaved closer to the fire in their hearts could exceed even three hundred, and like his parents and grandparents before him, was dragonborn.

But a Righ or Banrigh had not died of old age in over five hundred years. And Ardanach Ruadhluan was the only one since Queen Eithle to have surpassed two hundred.

Her usual elixirs and potions could do nothing for one whose soul was already stretched so very thin. The Righ had been fasting, abstaining from all food and water to heighten his connection to their ancestors. Even a simple sip of water could help revive his body and ties to the mortal world.

Airmid was eternally hopeful. She had gruel and humble bread readied alongside a tea more vitalizing than water alone. Water to bank the fires and earth to ground against air.

"My Righ, I-"

"The boy." Dull gray eyes fixated on her, a ring of silver around their edges. "Has he eaten yet?"

For a moment Airmid thought the Righ referred to the crown prince. With horror she realized he referred not to his trueborn grandson but the great-grandson most of the Isles wanted dead.

"No, my Righ. Not since yesterday." He and the she-dragon had been granted near the usual rations permitted to those exempt from the Long Night's demands; the young and the elderly, the pregnant and the crippled, those stranded as men without fire or dragons without Will. "Erna should be seeing to his breakfast shortly."

"It is time."

Airmid swallowed thickly. From the beginning she had advocated the gentler path. At first it had been mere herbs with affinity to earth and fire. Then the slightest additions of those that helped make dragonfire burn a bit hotter and brighter. And only then the traces of manbane's most impotent ingredients.

To a pure dragon such things were harmless or perhaps even mildly beneficial to their flame. Most of manbane's components were toxic in meaningful quantities. To one of their blood a gentle dosage should have helped feed the spark without risking the flaring up of an inferno that could consume them from the inside out.

But the Righ was neither patient nor gentle. Nor were the ancestors. The boy was among the daonna-arach now, and he had endured a Long Night when their souls collectively raged against the monsters in the dark and in turn called out to all able to take up the cause. He would soar with them, or he would burn by them.

"I have only the lore to go by," she cautioned. "Old Gormlaith has been dead over a century now, and she was the last to do a proper Lighting." One where the recipient had lived, anyway. Since the downfall of the Dragon Riders the thefts of human children by the desperate and childless had all but died off.

"And yet were the odds not improved?"

"Aye," Airmid conceded, "and perhaps made all the greater by your blood."

Unless the light of the Lord Moon's blood burned too bright for one of lowly lineage to hold. Not that there had ever been such precedent for an adoption of a human bastard into the royal clan to begin with. Among the lesser clans were such a Lighting had been attempted the odds had been most favorable toward those directly born from a duine-arach, exile or not. For a grandchild otherwise of human descent? Far less so.

"Then it shall be done."

Airmid suppressed a sigh and conceded to the Righ's demands. His Will was her own, and it was his Will to see this ordeal through to the bitter end.

* * *

When his arachtide had fully broken, and the last of his bones had snapped back into place and scales forced into skin, he lay shaking on his hands and knees with scarcely the energy to hold himself up. Only Myrna's presence at his side, her soothing murmurs in his ear and gentle fingers easing shoulder blades where wings had shriveled away, gave him strength to do that much.

His mate helped him into a sitting position and eased a water skin to his lips. His parched throat, sore from the screams and the shift, thanked her. His stomach roiled rebelliously.

Caedmon grimaced and pulled away from the skin. He cleared his throat and struggled for his first true word in weeks.

"M... Myrna."

"My prince," she whispered fondly. "Ever so eloquent."

She shucked her gown aside to lay beside him, skin to skin without scales or anything else between them. He twined his arms her and pressed her close. For a time Caedmon basked in her warmth and was content.

Then the shadow that had hung over his head for two impotent weeks descended with a vengeance. With a huff Caedmon made to roll out of bed and haul himself into clothes. Better he go drag himself to Womb Isle before his grandmother transported herself and all her court with her. Because gods knew she would raise merry hell the Righ over the subject of taking in a human bastard Rider and slighting both their own race and their shared blood. And then see Crown Isle burned through the throwing of their fires.

Myrna rolled over and trapped him beneath her. He growled in annoyance. "Not so fast, my prince. Your hoary bitch of a grandmother can take a day for you to pull yourself together." She fluttered her lashes. "Unless you mean to arrive upon me."

Caedmon's first instinct was to retort it was a miracle Soraid Knoth had allowed him enough time to overcome arachtide before airing her grievances. Then he recalled his grandmother was never so courteous. She would have seized upon the chance to upstage her Ruadhluan grandson with the one that bore her name... If Amleth was in a presentable state.

He huffed a laugh. "So that's why the Knoths have been so quiet. Can't go parading my baby brother if he's as beastly as I am."

For a moment Caedmon did want to fly due south to Womb Isle. With luck Amleth would still be coming out his arachtide and he could turn their own argument upon them.

Then Myrna pressed her chest against his, and all urgency flew from his mind. Caedmon could be the honorable twin and wait a day.

* * *

A loud rumble disturbed the morning calm. Eragon tensed, gaze snapping to his escorts. Ciar stared stoically back. But Brede could not entirely pull down her smile.

Saphira's own good humor rolled across their link in waves. _That was you, little one._

Eragon's eyes flicked down to his treacherous stomach. It had not even been a full day since he'd last eaten. How could his body had already grown so complacent on two or three hearty courses a day?

"There will be a feast soon enough, my prince," Brede said diplomatically. "I'm sure Erna won't keep you waiting long."

Saphira crossed the threshold into their chambers first. Eragon lingered, unable to tear away from Brede Standa. Distantly he remembered his great-grandmother's name was Marit Standa, that the woman in Brede's vision of his family tree resembled her. When the pair bowed to him and turned to leave, he finally found his voice.

"Wait!" Brede froze as she shifted back to him. "My great-grandmother was a Standa. Does that make you my cousin?"

"Distantly, but yes. You're five generations removed from our last common ancestors."

Eragon blinked. Of course daonna-arach had the long-lived memories of dragons. Folk in Carvahall could rarely name all eight great-grandparents. Few were literate and there was far more practical things to remember than the names of long-dead ancestors.

"What can you tell me about my other relatives?" he asked bluntly. "The recent ones." For an afternoon Oisin had droned on the names and deeds of prior Righs and Banrighs, but it was not the long dead Eragon cared for.

"On the Standa side Lord Torin and his brood are closer cousins to you. On the royal side..." Brede paused, before heaving a reluctant sigh. "You saw your great-uncle, Berach, last night. He's the Righ's younger brother. His mate is Imke. Their boy, Niall, is around your age. You have two uncles... _half_ -uncles." She wrinkled her nose as if the concept were utterly alien to her. "Beline had a proper mate before... Well, Prince Caedmon is the Righ's heir. His mate is Myrna. Then there's Amleth Knoth, but he doesn't count. Not like Caedmon does."

Eragon leaned heavily against Saphira's side, drawing strength from her as he did his best to mask his surprise. He hadn't realized he had relations so close among the daonna-arach, as close as Garrow had been. His shame at Beline grew only heavier. What sort of mother ran off to have bastards by a human man and die without ever returning to her original children?

Absently he granted Beline and Ciar their leave. They gracefully took it. Only in the privacy of his own chambers did he allow himself to slip to the floor and stay there.

Saphira nudged him with her snout. _I actually met Myrna the night before last. She was quite civil to me. And glimpsed her mate. He was the gold dragon pacing up a storm last night._

Eragon was not surprised by that. Caedmon shared the Righ's same fierce presence and raging temper.

The arrival of Erna and her maids with platters of food proved the best possible reprieve from his thoughts. He inhaled the aroma before stopping short. Saphira was not so fortunate. She sneezed a plume of fire that singed a roasted lamb.

"Forgive me, my prince," Erna murmured. "Most of this food was readied the day before. The spice helps compensate for the flavor."

Whatever they had used had near eradicated Saphira's delicate sense of smell. For once Eragon's duller senses gave him an advantage. Yet they were both ravenous enough to wolf down the food without complaint.

Perhaps the servants realized how hungry they were for they came earlier than usual to clear away their platters, all picked clean. Erna lingered with a steaming goblet in her hands.

"For you, my prince, to recover your spirits after a long and stressful night."

Eragon dubiously considered her offering. He felt the heat radiating from feet away. For a moment he thought the goblet silver before realizing it shone like milk-glass. Shining silver runes were engraved into its sides. Erna's steady gaze never left his own.

At last he grudgingly accepted the goblet, for it was hot enough to burn. Squinting against the steam, he made out the mulled drink, deep and red. Strange spices floated on its surface. He raised it to his lips. Its contents were thick and viscous, like molten steel down his throat. Eragon gagged at the taste, like earth and iron, but downed it all the same.

Erna carefully took the goblet back from him. She bowed low and bid them a good rest.

Eragon scarcely heard her. Hunger sated and stomach roiling all the same, his exhaustion suddenly throbbed in his temples and dragged down his eyelids. He curled down on the bed as Saphira coiled herself protectively around him. He dreamed of fire.

* * *

Somewhere between sleep and waking, he floated in warm darkness, and knew naught but peace.

Then the fire shifted away, and the ruthless sunlight poured in. Eragon grunted in protest. And then he shivered. Acclimated to her body heat the loss of her warmth and her insulating wing membrane was made all the worse.

A glance outside revealed it was early afternoon. His body demanded more rest to make up for its missed night. Oisin Laoghaire was not so understanding.

Man and weredragon silently appraised the other. Dark shadows ringed Oisin's eyes, but they had regained their former brightness. He bowed his head curtly. "Good afternoon, my prince. I hope you had a good rest."

 _Up until you barged in,_ Saphira muttered privately. Eragon choked back a laugh.

He stood to be more on eye level with the man, for even in human shape Oisin towered over him. "I take it we're finally learning why your people dread the Long Night?"

"Our people," Oisin corrected. His tone was nowhere near as sharp than how he had first scolded Eragon's blatant attempts to mark himself apart from the daonna-arach. "To not cause you undue stress it was decided for you to learn of its true implications after its passing. Only recently has your knowledge of the Word become adequate enough to fully comprehend our histories."

Eragon's resentment at being left in the dark like a child was nothing new. The Righ regarded him as somewhere between captive and hapless infant. He did perk up at the promise of full knowledge, for the mystery of the daonna-arach was one he and Saphira had but fragments to piece together.

"Where do we begin?"

Oisin arched an expectant brow. "Early in your instruction I taught you of the gods. What do you remember of them?"

Eragon held back a groan. For a moment he inwardly rolled his eyes at the hours about to me wasted on groundless mythology. As a very young boy Aunt Marian had done her best to instill the proper rites and rituals in her boys, but there had been so many to remember. After her death Uncle Garrow had stopped caring. There had been too much work to do without worrying over which spirits might get offended over what, and so Eragon had grown up with Carvahall's gods as distant and nebulous figures in the background of his life. His interest over the weredragon deities was no greater.

"There are the Mother and the Father," he said gamely, recalling those invoked in the prayers of the Long Night.

Their tutor arched his brow higher. The expectant silence grew.

 _They care a lot about a sky god and an earth goddess,_ Saphira hissed over their link.

Of course there was an earth goddess. Eragon could think of too many human ones to name. The Urgals had Rahna and even the dwarves, who honored Helzvog as lord of stone, had Sindri preside over the fertile earth.

So too were sky gods just as ubiquitous. The dwarves had Urur and the Urgals Parkun. The humans had too many to name, proud and quick-tempered lords of storm and sun and high-vaulted heavens.

He recalled the terms in the Word and awkwardly strung them together. "Mother Earth and Father Sky?"

 _"Adhar Athair is Talamh Mathair,"_ Oisin intoned. Earth-Mother and Sky-Father. "Now open your minds to me."

They did so, for the grueling force of Oisin's lessons was no longer so hard to bear. This time he sent far more than words and grammar across their link.

Eragon grit his teeth against the surge of visions and sensations, scents and songs. His mind formed vague impressions into a woman, eternal and matronly, soft and plump like Aunt Marian had been. Her mantle was the rich green earth and the vast blue seas. She smelled of salt and soil, sex and the milky scent of a newborn. She was the warmth of the womb and the quiet dark of the grave. She was the gift of bounty and the hardness of famine. She was the Earth Mother, Lady of the World and Waters, patient and cruel, fickle and bountiful.

Always, there was a masculine force alongside the feminine, eternal and entwined. Eragon's mind comprehended him as a vast dragon, scales the sapphire of a noonday sky. Beneath the vault of his wings stretched the width of the world. His wing-beats were the winds, his breath the clouds, and his eye the blazing sun. His fire was a searing radiance that dimmed all else in creation. He was the summer breeze and the winter wind, hearth-fire and raging inferno, the spark. of life given and denied. He was high and distant, all-seeing and all-guarding. He was the Sky Father, Lord of Wind and Flame.

Eragon staggered from the onslaught, falling against Saphira's side. He felt the tremble of the muscles beneath her hide but her solid stance on four legs kept her grounded.

Oisin's face smoothed into serenity. He regarded them calmly, finally free of the taught impatience that had plagued his being since their very first lesson. "There are countless lesser spirits and deities, but they mean little in the grand scheme of creation. Now, you surely you know one not so insignificant."

"Triath Luan," he murmured. "The Lord Moon."

Oisin's lip quirked. "Correct. Perhaps it is best that you and Saphira make yourselves comfortable, my prince."

The she-dragon obligingly coiled up on their bed. Eragon settled himself by her paws. He was surprised when Oisin lowered himself to the floor too to remain at his eye level.

Oisin's mind invited them onward. Eragon allowed himself to be swept away into the story, their surroundings falling away as the dream became their world.

 **Sky gods and earth goddesses are ubiquitous in Indo-European mythology. Even a few of the gods mentioned for multiple races fits the pattern so much I had to poke fun at the coincidence.**

 **Eragon refers to gods and hells in his expletives so obviously people in Carvahall keep some form of a pantheon. The only human god outside of those practiced by the Wandering Tribes is Angvard, who seems to be both a Surdan and dwarven (!?) death god. Eragon obviously didn't grow up in a religious household so I'm assuming the worship of individual gods is largely localized. Each region probably has its own important deities (probably primarily agricultural for Palancar Valley), traditions, and rituals. There are probably broad patterns in common, especially in neighboring traditions where ideas are most commonly exchanged.**

 **And then there are the daonna-arach. You can tell a lot about a culture by looking at their religion and cosmology, as they say a lot about their traditions and how they see themselves in relation to the world around them. We'll be seeing a big part of the weredragon identity shortly ;)**


	9. The Lord and The Child

**REMINDER: Two part chapter here! Please make sure you check the one before it.  
**

In the beginning there was naught but darkness. Eternal darkness, and eternal strife. Against it the Earth Mother despaired. Try as she might, her seas boiled away. Her land was hard and barren, for nothing could take root. Against it the Sky Father raged in vain. His gusts died on his wings and his flames in his throat, for his fury lacked true strength.

Finally, in that endless void, they found each other. They gazed upon their polar opposite, and knew completion. And so became one. She was his strength and his shield. He was her spark and her sword.

At last the Sky Father was victorious in his struggle. His fire burned back oblivion. Beneath his wings he now had something greater than himself to fight for.

Under the sun and skies of her consort the Earth Mother at last had the peace she needed. With her warmth life kindled in her womb. It blossomed across her lands and in her seas. She built herself up, with fathomless seas and endless earth around her fiery heart, so that chaos might never breach her creation from below.

When her world was seeded, the Mother shaped simple creatures, beasts for her lands and fish for her seas. The Father breathed life into those that pleased him. He denied all his spark. His flame was his greatest weapon against the dark, the source of his pride and power, and he guarded it most jealously.

The Mother was moved by the challenge and so created the birds and other beasts of the air. The Father deigned to let such little things fly beneath him, but never to reach the vault of his heavens. He denied them all his flame.

Incensed, the Mother pushed herself ever harder. She devised a being that lacked power in its physical form but granted it the means and the mind to comprehend their world and alter it like no more beast could. To improve her chances of pleasing her consort, the Mother altered that basic template and birthed four brother races from it; humans and elves, dwarves and Urgals.

The Father breathed life into them, as was his wont, but proclaimed such humble little things could never be worthy of his greatest gifts. Unlike her earlier creations, the brother races were sentient, and resented their sire for his lofty pride. They were cunning things and so stole the gift denied them. The Sky Father howled in rage at the loss of a few precious sparks, but the Earth Mother stood firm against him, for she was dearly proud of her humble little flame-thieves. The Father retaliated by forever denying them his sky. Always they would stare up the birds in envy of the realm not even their greatest mind could conquer.

Despite a soft spot for the little things that would quickly come to vex her for their endless insistence on meddling with her world, and later endless grief when they sundered her, the Mother was not yet done creating. She melded a sentient mind to the might of her waters and so birthed the sea serpents. They were cold and cruel things, utterly lacking in warmth. In disgust the Father denied them both his flame and his breath. Forever would the sea serpents dwell in the dark depths of the ocean, never able to draw breath outside it.

The Mother pushed herself further and so birthed the Fanghur. At last, the Father felt the tiniest bit moved. Yet, when he breathed life into them, so too did he first feel despair when he realized such deadly grace still fell short of him. The Fanghur became fliers unmatched in speed and grace, yet still denied their sire's spark.

Over the course of creation the Sky Father had already begun to tire of his endless battle against the void. Already chaos had shaped itself into mockeries of men and beasts, dark reflections to slip into the world and wreck havoc upon it. Such little threats were beneath the Father to sniff out. And, as his consort became increasingly absorbed in her children, so too did he feel a growing loneliness.

When the Mother began her final creation, the Sky Father reached down to guide her hand. The Fanghur had fallen just short of perfection. His chosen race needed power, strength and endurance to weather the endless struggle against destruction. They need not be dull, but shine as vivid and varied as his rainbows. So confident was the Sky Father with this creation that he himself shaped their heart of hearts, to contain his spark in a vessel of blood and bone, and at last breathed life into it.

And so hatched the first dragon. He grew in leaps and bounds, swift mastering the sky. When it outshone even the Fanghur, the Sky Father wept in joy, and bestowed upon the dragons his gift of flame.

Blessed with flame and sky, the first dragon was determined to prove his sire proud, and tried to be the first to rise to his lofty height. Yet at the fringe of the firmament the air grows so thin even a dragon's lungs will fail. The first dragon pushed himself beyond his breaking point and so fell dead upon his mother's earth.

The Sky Father, enraged at the loss of one he held so dear, refused the Earth Mother her due. Even the souls of Fanghur, no matter how high they soar in life, return to their Mother upon death. But the Father called his dragon, the first to fly and the first to die, to him. No longer tethered to flesh and bone, the dragon spirit left its mortal body behind to rot with its Mother. Invisible against their Father's radiance, the dragon souls rose to join him all the same, fighting by his side. Those they hunted tried taking the shapes of sea serpents, the only foe capable of besting an elder. Their forms, endless in shape and wrongness, are now simply called Serpents.

The Mother raged bitterly against the theft of her final children. Even birds and Fanghur returned to her after a lifetime in the clouds. Her consort ignored her fury. All others were hers. Leave him his favorites.

In the dawn of days the sun never set, for the battle against utter destruction, for a moment of distraction was all chaos needed to undo the struggle of creation. No matter how the souls beneath him grew in number, the Father refused to trust him with his burden. Already they were proving themselves capable of being snuffed out. And a part of those souls was mortal still and drawn to their Mother. At times they settled down at the edges of the world, where neither Mother nor Father truly held domain, and rose only after rest.

Then, in a time that knew only endless day, hatched a dragon black as night. Perhaps it was by accident or design the Sky Father granted him too large a spark, for his soul burned no like no other. Perhaps his own sheer will was what allowed that spark to burn so high.

Quickly the black dragon grew to surpass all others living, even the great elders and the mightiest serpents dwelling in the deepest depths. Not long after that he outgrew the confines of the world, and so fought to rise above them.

Where the first dragon and all others failed, the black dragon transcended, and so became the first and only to soar beside their sire on wings of flesh and bone. As a living dragon he did battle alongside the souls of the dead and roosted in the lands at the edge of the world.

With such a protector at his side, the Sky Father at last allowed himself a rest. For a first time, the sun descended from its zenith, and he slept in the arms of his consort at the edge of the world. So did all of creation gaze upon the first night and learn to fear its darkness. Yet, so too did they first behold the stars, the souls no longer invisible in the shadow of their sire. Brightest amongst them all shone the Lord Moon. Where the stars were dead and stagnant Triath Luan lived. In time he grew to surpass them all.

Though a pale shadow of the Sky Father the Moon did not yet wax and wane. What rest he needed Triath Luan gained during the day alongside the stars in the lands beyond the sunrise. For a time this was the way of the world.

As even the great gods grow lonely, so did the Lord Moon. He was flesh and bone, and the stars things of light and soulfire. He could not touch them properly, for to his hide they were as insubstantial and searing as lightning. They fawned upon him as a living god, second only to their sire, and he sickened of their fawning.

Triath Luan had once looked down on creation only to flush out any lurking Serpents. Now for the first time he truly beheld the world he had fought so hard to escape. He watched the dragon clans, little hatchlings that tripped over their own paws beneath the gazes of watchful parents and elders sought out by the younger, and yearned for such ties.

For a while pride held him back but even the Lord Moon's dignity wears itself thin. One sunrise he could no longer hold himself back. Instead of following the stars into the west, he flew to earth as the Sky Father rose.

Even in the sun's shadow Triath Luan burned bright. All other dragons immediately knew him as their Lord Moon. They shied away from his light or fell in prostration.

Triath Luan acted as dragons did in the dawn of days and did still, but none treated him as one of their own. None dared challenge him and scurried away like mice. She-dragons hid away at his mating calls. They all thought themselves lesser in comparison. Just as a great elder would refuse to lower themselves to a moonstruck yearling, so too did they refuse to let the Lord Moon sully himself by bonding to one so beneath him.

Triath Luan, spurned by his own kind, fell into despair. Yet even at his lowest his pride could not allow him to go before the Sky Father and reveal his weakness. Nor could he turn his claws himself, not even to rise as a star and finally find satisfaction among their number.

In desperation he turned to the one being greater than himself that was not the Sky Father. He returned to the Mother he had scorned since coming out of the egg and fell before her in supplication. He begged the Mother to rid him of his misery, so that he might finally find the company he so craved, be they flesh or spirit.

The Earth Mother was moved by his pleas, for even a prodigal son was her child all the same. And because Triath Luan was her child she had absolutely no intentions of killing him. Ridding him of his mortal ties would only allow his soul to leave her forever.

The Lord Moon was too powerful to tie down by force. And so the Earth Mother devised a plan where he would stay with her willingly.

The Mother offered him rebirth, a chance to don a new skin where none would know him and so start new. Foolishly Triath Luan agreed. He was too haughty to believe he could become anything less than a dragon, albeit a lesser one than the Lord Moon, or that the Earth Mother cared about far more than simple happiness.

Triath Luan fell into a sleep so deep it bordered on death. For the first time in his long and tumultuous life he knew peace.

He awoke a man; Uir Leanabh, the Earth Child. His hair was black of night, skin marred from a thousand battles, and clad in little more than mere rags. His left eye, the great and shining eye the Lord Moon uses to gaze upon the world, was tightly bound beneath cloth, for any who had ever gazed upon a night sky would look at it and know him.

Uir Leanabh bitterly cursed the Earth Mother for her trickery. He cursed himself for his foolishness. With a will such as his it would take not even a flex of his power to cast off this second skin. But Uir Leanabh was as proud a man as he was a dragon. The Earth Mother had simply offered him a chance to start anew. He would try his damnedest to find his companionship, even as a mere mortal man.

No babe is born knowing how to stand and speak, but Uir Leanabh was not born again a babe. The Earth Mother knew she could never suppress his memories for a mortal life and that he would rage all the harder against her hold. He he would rage against that skin to escape the indignities of infancy. Despite his newness, Uir Leanabh stood and took his first shaking steps with a dragon's defiance. So did he stumble his way into his life among men.

The Sea Folk, two hundred years settled on their Isles, looked distrustfully upon the stranger that had appeared in their midst. He was a wild man that carried himself like king and had no patience for the world around him. He refused to work for food and shelter, no matter how honest the labor or fair the trade. So too did he snap at charity and the kindness of strangers. Even more ominously, in all this time the sun never set, for the Sky Father refused to rest without his strongest son to take up his burden at night.

Even in this form Uir Leanabh radiated power and no man dared raise hand against him. Rather than confront him directly, the people instead pulled away and turned their backs, to leave time and neglect do what they dared not.

Sick and starving, Uir Leanabh still refused to admit retreat. He fell into fever, so delusional he knew not where he was or what he was. This was how Lorelei found him when out riding with her ladies, prone and unconscious along the side of the road.

Her ladies were terrified at the sight of this strange man, so fierce even in the depths of unconsciousness, and their guards moved to put the poor bastard out of his misery. Their princess stayed their hands. Beyond the man's scars and bound eye, she saw skin flush with fever, and proud features worn ragged by starvation. So did Lorelei order Uir Leanabh brought with her into the halls of her father so that the best healers in all the Isles could attend him.

In his delusion Uir Leanabh fought back against the strange hands that held him down and forced food and bitter herbs down his throat. He snapped at their fingers and gouged at their eyes with blunt human nails. When the feeble old healers gave up on such a difficult patient, their furious princess saw to the man herself. Gentle and firm, she swatted aside his feeble blows and waited for his struggles to wear him out before feeding him or wiping the sweat from his brow. So did Uir Leanabh grudgingly accept her as his healer, allowing no one else near.

When his fever broke and Uir Leanabh remembered himself, so did he first gaze upon the face of Lorelei with a clear mind, and burn with shame and stranger feelings at the thought of a mere mortal woman saving to his life.

Gazing into the one shining eye of her patient, Lorelei was simply relieved Uir Leanabh had returned to himself. She was a true princess, charitable and kind, and offered him food and shelter in her father's hall until he fully recovered his strength.

Uir Leanabh burned in humiliation. Honor demanded he repay his debt and so he did. King Thorben's lands were extensive and there was always need of more hands. Animals were terrified of him, but he bore bleating sheep on his back regardless as he led them to their paddocks at night. During the harvest out he went into the fields and orchards, hauling home more bushels than even the strongest ox could carry.

The Hjorr line had ruled the Isles for two hundred years, ever since King Alvadr led his people across the sea to escape the lands beyond the sunset, but uneasy did the crown rest upon King Thorben's head. His beloved wife had died but bearing him a single daughter, his dearest Lorelei, and he could not betray her memory by taking another and siring sons upon her. Their king a softhearted fool with but a single heiress, his most distant lords forsook him altogether, and looked no further than their own isolated islands. The greatest and most ambitious of his lords plagued his castle with their suits, all wishing to take Lorelei as their bride and so claim her kingdom from her.

No suitor, for all of their boasting and bravado, could brave Lorelei's champion. Their courage failed beneath Uir Leanabh's baleful right eye. So did even Lorelei's betrothed, her own cousin who believed the crown his god given right, flee for fear of ever beholding Uir Leanabh's left eye.

In time the stranger and the princess became as one. In the sacred grove of the Earth Mother did Lorelei take Uir Leanabh as her groom. Yet Uir Leanabh took Lorelei as his mate. Where a human marriage was rendered null upon the death of a spouse, so did the bonds of dragons endure into the stars.

And the Earth Mother smiled at her victory. Lorelei was her child alone, her soul the Earth's upon death. She knew in her deep, fiery heart that Uir Leanabh would follow her in time, forsaking the stars for a peaceful and eternal sleep in the arms of his beloved.

So did she smile upon their union and in time bless them with a child. The Sky Father, exhausted and furious, obliviously breathed life into the babe without recognizing his own errant son in his human flesh.

Uir Leanabh's skin was dark and olive, his hair black as night, and one visible eye almost too bright to gaze upon. Lorelei's hair was red-gold as the dawn and eyes the pale gray of a new morning. Their daughter was born fair as the vanished moon, with a thick head of hair as pale and lustrous, and eyes bright as her sire's. They named her Amalia, for the labors of her father that had inadvertently finally made him feel at home with Lorelei and her human subjects. The Sea Folk, who had prayed for a son with Uir Leanabh's power and Lorelei's humanity, were anxious at such an omen.

For ten full years the sun never set and the world once more knew the eternal light of the dawn of days. For ten full years, the Sky Father never faltered in his fight.

And on the very anniversary of the last sunrise, so did the Sky Father finally fail, and the sky grew black as the dark tried to swallow him and all the world whole.

Uir Leanabh roared his defiance. He cast aside his binding to reveal his left eye and himself as the Lord Moon, great and terrible. For the first time in ten years he took wing. With an earth-shaking bellow he rallied the stars to his side. Together they burned back the darkness and ended the first eclipse, prying their Sky Father from the night's gullet.

The Sea Folk fell upon their knees before Princess Lorelei, wife of Triath Luan, and pledged their eternal allegiance to King Thorben and his blessed line.

Lorelei tended her aging father and Amalia as best she could, but always her eye was turned skyward. Though she gazed upon her husband every night never once did he return to her side. Furious at his child's betrayal the Sky Father demanded the Lord Moon to rest beside the stars at the edge of the world every night, to never again touch the earth and know human want and mortal weakness.

For ten full years Triath Luan obeyed. Every night he watched his daughter grow up from afar and his wife wither in his absence. Every dawn he returned to roost among the stars in a place that brought him no rest.

Yet though he was back among the heavens a part of Triath Luan was human still. It craved solid earth beneath his feet and the rest of true sleep. Above all he yearned for the arms of his wife and to hold their daughter once more.

And so full ten long years the Triath Luan grew weary. Every night his eyes dipped the slightest bit further closed as the moon first waned.

On the very anniversary of his return, Triath Luan once more attempted to take wing for his usual course across the sky. Only this time his wings failed, and the moon did not rise, but fell to earth.

On human hands and knees Uir Leanabh crawled to the halls of his family. This time the Sea Folk knew him and hurried him to the castle of their queen.

Queen Lorelei looked upon her husband for the first time in ten years and gaped at him. Uir Leanabh stumbled into her arms and collapsed, utterly content and dead to the world. So did the night descend upon them all.

The world cried out in fear as the stars were snuffed out one by one, for both the moon and sun slept.

So did Amalia spread her wings for the first time, and proved herself the Lord Moon's child in truth. For the first Long Night, a night that seemed to last eternity to those down below, she rose to battle alongside her paternal ancestors.

Once more did the world know dawn, for the Sky Father awoke from his slumber to take wing.

Uir Leanabh also awoke, utterly at peace in the arms of his wife and mate. His serenity was short-lived, for the Sea Folk was quick to burst into their chambers, and fall upon their knees to fawn before him as the dragons once had when he first descended to earth.

Unable to bear their adoration, Triath Luan once more spread his wings to ascend once more to the lands beyond the sunset. But this time he could not bear to leave his beloved behind. Nor could Lorelei bear the thought of another parting. But first she bid her husband to wait for their daughter.

Amalia descended from her first fight utterly exhausted and collapsed into the arms of her parents as if she were a little girl once more. Both her parents refused to allow her sleep. The Lord Moon bid her to rise once more, to follow him and her mother to their rightful place among the stars in the halls of the Sky Father.

But Lorelei refused. With King Thorben's passing she was Queen of the Isles, and Amalia her only child. For them to both leave the Isles behind was to abandon their kingdom to the depredations of those ambitious and arrogant lords that only heeded her because she was wife of the Lord Moon. One of them would have to remain behind. Either Amalia could rise to join her father or else inherit her maternal birth right.

Her father's daughter to the core, Amalia immediately pressed to take up her mother's crown and inherit her full responsibilities. When the Lord Moon furiously beckoned for them both to join him, Amalia proved herself braver than her sire, and openly defied her father as he had never dared the Sky Father.

At last the Lord Moon bowed his head and yielded to the wishes of his family. When he rose with Lorelei alone in his arms, Amalia settled into the throne of the Hjorrs, and proved to the Sea Folk their royal line had not forsaken them.

So did Amalia Luan become queen. Born of man and dragon, she forged two disparate peoples of the Isles into one, the Sea Folk and the clanless dragons they lived alongside. And she became the first of the duine-arach and mother of our race.

For two weeks after Triath Luan's rising did the moon wax at night as he fully recovered his strength. Lorelei became keeper of their hall, setting the skies of dawn and dusk alight with the flames of their hearth as she welcomed the comings and goings of both her husband and the Sky Father.

When the Lord Moon waned once more, and quietly descended to earth to sleep once more as Uir Leanabh on some quiet and far flung isle, once more did Amalia rise to take his place. Thus become the burden of her line, to forever hold back the darkness every Long Night so that creation might see another dawn.

* * *

Eragon blinked, remembering himself at last as the last remnants of the vision fell away. Outside the sun was low in its course, bathing the room in the warm golden glow of late afternoon.

 _That was beautiful,_ Saphira murmured. Glaedr had recited to them the stories of dragons but Oisin had refined those raw emotions and feelings through the exact nature of the human word.

Eragon said nothing. No wonder the daonna-arach so reverently regarded their Righ. They believed he was no mere king, but capable of holding back the night where an army of stars could not, the blood of kings and gods.

"And outcasts and exiles," Oisin added ruefully, for too late did Eragon remember their minds were still connected. "But that is a tale for another time."

Eragon hastily severed the connection but the flush of shame did not rise to his cheeks. Their tutor had already gotten a personal look into Eragon's deep-running skepticism toward the supernatural, first instilled in him by Garrow and expounded upon by Oromis and Glaedr's brutal insistence there was no comprehensive existence after death.

He remembered the utter nothingness of a life snuffed out. So too did he now know Oisin's utter faith in the stars as the ancestors watching over the earth from above.

 _What did the wild dragons believe, Saphira?_ he asked her privately, for Glaedr had thoroughly instructed her in their ways even if bonded dragons practiced very little of them.

 _They did regard the stars as souls of their dead, lighting the way at night,_ Saphira confirmed. _I don't know if the wild dragons regarded them as reverently as some humans and dwarves do their ancestors. Ancestral memory doesn't touch upon such deep and personal beliefs, more broad experience and instinct. The further back you go, the deeper it blurs together. The only reason we can recall parts of the Pact so vividly are because of how integral it became to our race. The times before the Du Fyn Skulblaka are unknown to me._

"Why did the Righ go down into the earth if he had to fight among the stars?"

Oisin tapped his temple. "The spirit goes. Only the Lord Moon has the strength in his body to rise so high and fight the Serpents and the myriad forms of chaos. When the spirit fights the body sleeps. To kill it is to kill the Righ. So down into the earth he goes, to be protected by the Mother while his spirit fights for the Father on high. And so he is joined by a hearth-keeper, as Lorelai once watched over Uir Leanabh, his last line of defense for his mortal body and his link back down to the living world."

Eragon secretly wondered if the seclusion was instead for deep prayer and a battle more spiritual than supernatural. Instead, he asked, "What happens to the daonna-arach after death? Your tale seems as if both the earth and the sky want them."

"We are born of both, and so we go to both. For ten years our interred in the womb of her Mother and know the long sleep, for ten are the years Uir Leanabh was allowed his rest. Then on the tenth anniversary of burial is the Rising. The dead are woken from their sleep and bones burned in salt and flame so that their souls might leave their ashes behind to finally take their place among the stars."

The dwarves interred their dead in caskets of stone in the hearts of their mountains. Most humans simply buried theirs, be they in humble graves or grand tombs. Riders and dragons alike had both burned their dead. Of course the daonna-arach had found a way to wed the two.

Then he realized his grandmother had been denied her Rising. Her human family had laid her to rest without ever knowing to one day wake her soul. Now there was no one left in Carvahall to tend to the graves of those left behind.

"What about Amalia?" he blurted out. Oisin arched a brow at him, and he hastened to elaborate. "She died eventually, didn't she? Why did her descendents take over her responsibility when she was already up among the stars to fight for them?"

Oisin rose to his feet, stern mask falling into place. "A tale for another time, my prince. We have survived another Long Night. Today is a day for rest and respite." He bowed curtly to them both. "I shall leave you to your rest. Our lessons will resume as normal tomorrow."

He took his leave. Eragon cursed their oath to the Righ, for once more they were bound to their room and could not chase the damned man down for answers. It was too convenient a coincidence that Erna brought up their supper mere minutes later.

Famished, he fell upon the food, so bursting with spice it near seared his tongue. Saphira, nose wrinkled, ate more delicately and picked around the worst of the spices. She grumbled how daonna-arach must have no sense of smell if they consumed such heavy spice on a daily basis.

He groaned in dismay when he realized Erna had brought up that damned goblet again, its steaming contents once more filled to the brim.

But he downed it all the same. After the searing heat of supper the warmth of the offering seemed almost mild in comparison.

 **Good god did that mythology take on a life of its own. I've had the broad strokes written down in my files for this story for years. But only by trying to write it down here did the vision fully take place.**

 **I've laid out hints in this chapter about the actual state of the world and what first drove everyone across the sea to Alagaesia and its islands. And why, although Gaelic is my primary inspiration for the daonna-arach, why some odd smatterings of other names and languages show up. Here's a question for you: How desperate does a people have to be to abandon large parts of their faith and traditions to meld what is left to something else and hope at least a part of themselves survives in something new?**


	10. Simmering

**Guess who found her inspiration for this again? Hopefully this chapter will provide some more background of the family clusterfuck Eragon has stumbled into and some foreshadowing about things coming up REAL soon ; )**

Flying out with the pride of the East at his back, Caedmon had every intention of charging straight into the vipers' nest and making his grandmother's court bend over backwards in their attempts to host a crown prince born of their blood but not bearing their name. If the Righ turned a deaf ear to their rumblings, then it was Caedmon's duty as heir to assure this grievous insult did not flare up into civil war.

They had been making great time. There had been a southerly wind to carry them fast, made all the faster by the deft workings of his casters. They would have made Iron Castle by late afternoon.

Then the messenger, bearing the rich green and iron gray colors of his Lady, intercepted them. The Knoths were not on Womb Isle at all. In her wisdom his grandmother had _graciously_ moved court to Honey Isle in preparation of his visit, so that both of her grandsons might stand upon common ground in their birthplace. Caedmon, his spirit still not fully settled so recently after _arachtide,_ could not wholly hide his snarl.

Honey Isle, among the southernmost of the major Isles, had long been under the domain of the Knoths. Few other islands supported the vibrant foliage needed for beehives to thrive and produce an unmatched amount of liquid gold.

Summer Castle, however, had been built as a crown possession. Upon this haven elders had warmed their bones and delicate children had sprung up strong. Caedmon and Amleth had both been born there. Together they had lived out their early years, so that the future Lord of the South and Lord of the Isles would grow up brothers in blood and bond.

Up until their mot- the traitor had destroyed it all.

Once the sight of Summer Castle on the horizon engulfed him in sorrow and frustration. Tonight it made him billow smoke like his gods damned grandfather.

More than ever Caedmon longed for Myrna at his side to quell his rage and blunt his temper. Instead, beneath Beline Standa's wary eye, he buried it all the deeper.

 _You are not a beast,_ he chanted to himself. _You are not a beast. You are **not** going to bellow at them for their stupidity. You are not a... _His stomach rumbled. _Oh, gods fucking damn it! I'm tired and starving, you hoary old bitch! Gods forbid we meet on middle ground!_

It was after dark when they reached their destination, the moon the slimmest of crescents overhead.

In the north, where the seas where cold and bleak, the castles were all stone fortresses against the things that bore down on a moonless night. Crown Castle was the design taken to its most extreme, a holdfast of solid rock meant to guard a Righ's vulnerable form whilst their spirit did battle amongst the stars.

Yet so far south the Serpents rarely struck. No matter how fertile the land or plentiful the people, the prize they craved most of all was far to the north, and the islands to the north and east closer to the world's fringes. Summer Castle was in truth a palace, graceful towers and pale gray walls open to sea breezes and ocean views.

Of course no one flew up to meet their crown prince. No one certainly allowed Caedmon to slink off to his quarters to make himself presentable.

All three Knoths ambushed him at the threshold. Caedmon met them head high, the picture of a prince despite heaving sides from the long flight and the stink of hard travel. Golden braziers bathed the hall in a golden glow. Fragrant dishes and sweet mead hung heady in the air.

Lady Soraid met his gaze with a genial curve to her lips. Elegant gold chains, studded in precious stones, draped artfully from her horns and slender neck. She wore them with the ease of one who could dress themselves in a treasure trove no matter their form. Just briefly she dipped her head in acknowledgement of his royal status. "Welcome, Prince Caedmon. You've been mostly eagerly expected."

Years of practice kept Caedmon from tensing when she extended her perfumed wings for the slightest of embraces. He dipped down to touch the tip of his snout to hers. Tactfully he pulled away before he could blast her with his terrible breath. "Good evening, grandmother. Unfortunately I'm later than I would've liked."

"How can the guest of honor be late to his own feast?" Soraid countered lightly. "You honor us with your presence. How could we receive you in a lord's humble hall with a true royal residence so close by?"

Caedmon's smile froze in place as near a snarl when he next turned to Soraid's direct heir. Upon reaching full maturity rare was the duine-arach that could look him in the eye. Rarer still were those that could look down at him. Naturally the Righ was one. Loic Knoth remained another. If Soraid was dark as iron ore than Loic shone like polished steel. His eyes cut as deep.

For a moment the two males eyed each other as the scales of power wavered between them. Caedmon was crown prince and Loic a prince consort without a princess. One was the Righ's heir and other heir to a lordship now undoubtedly stronger in the earthly realm. One was son and the other sire.

In the end it came down to the host. Lady Soraid Knoth was but an honored guest in these halls. So was Caedmon. Summer Castle was his father's seat, part of a consolation prize for all his disgraced former mate had put him through. He clenched his teeth and ducked his head in that tiny little bow their family favored so much.

"Father," he said.

"Caedmon," Loic returned. Steely eyes swept over him. "You're looking well." _Not like a blundering beast,_ was left unsaid.

He ignored the barbed comment to fixate on the last Knoth. It was his luck Amleth's own _arachtide_ had broken and his little brother looked fully himself. His scales were so a pale silver they were oft likened to Amalia's. "Hello, brother. I hope we haven't kept you from the festivities."

Amleth smiled thinly. "On the contrary, I am sure the feast aged like a fine wine; the dishes have simmered, and the singers time to warm their voices."

"And they'll sound all the sweeter once you've had time to recover yourself," Lady Soraid interjected.

Caedmon took his leave. Summer Castle's finest chambers were those his parents had likely conceived him in and where his father did gods knew what now. The rooms of his boyhood might have seemed insult in comparison, a prince living beneath a shamed prince consort, but he took comfort in the familiar furniture and faded tapestries.

He could have called Summer Castle's simpering servants or his own companions to attend him, but it rankled his pride. There was no damn time for soaking in a steaming bath to relieve leaden wings and aching shoulders. One quick scrub and shave later, he returned to his chambers to dress. By then his clothing had been delivered and arranged out on his bed.

His finest clothes of course blatantly proclaimed his allegiance. His tunic was fine red wool with intricate embroidery of cloth-of-silver, his boots red velvet. Around his shoulders he draped a heavy cloak of darker crimson to compensate for a lack of wings in this form. He pinned it in place with a heavy silver broach, a shimmering moonstone set at its center. He buckled a blade of the finest heart-steel to his belt. His crown was even more precious; star-steel, so precious only one of his station could wear it as ornamentation outside the raw necessity of battle.

Not that Caedmon was even capable of shifting in such heavy finery without shredding it to pieces. It was the show of it all the south delighted in.

Brede and Ciar awaited outside his door, smoothly falling in step a pace behind him. They had exchanged scales for breastplates of heart-steel. After all, the Long Night had passed and they dined in the halls of those both vassal and family. What use did his protectors have need for smoothly shifting into dragon-shape?

Though the main course had not yet been served the oaken dining table was laden with flutes of golden mead and starters long picked over by his family and their guests. Of course they were not alone. The lords and ladies of a dozen clans feasted with them. All were of course in human form in their richest finery. Even Summer Castle's grand hall could not accommodate over a dozen dragons.

The only dragon in the hall was not a guest at all, but one of the Manran clan. Her scales like polished amethysts, she hummed in time to two kinswomen. He dimly recognized them from a feast Uncle Berach had hosted in Home Castle last year. Their song was soft and sweet, praising the bounties of high summer and the Earth-Mother at her most generous. Most of the lords listened with half-lidded eyes, bathed in visions of hot summer sun and some pleasant breeze off from the north. Caedmon kept his mind closed off from it.

At his arrival the hall fell silent as the Manran bards retreated into the background. Mailin Maolchonaire, _fili_ of Lady Soraid, instead rose from the table in robes of rich green.

"Hail, Prince Caedmon the Suntouched, shield of his people, blood of moon and iron!"

The lords and ladies took up his call, hall echoing with their thunderous harmony. Caedmon returned it with a silent nod, settling into the seat of honor.

Mailin opened heart and mind to sing as only a _fili_ could. At last Caedmon lowered his own defenses to let the tale claim him. On a distant shore he knelt alongside Volsung of the knotty hill when he pledged allegiance to the Allfather and sailed alongside them, away from the wars in the west to their Isles of the east. The years flowed by like water, Volsung of the knotty hill holding the south steady against an endless flood of refugees and all that followed. Centuries flowed by like water. Siggeir of the Knoth, once suitor to Queen Lorelei, was her pillar in the south with the Lord Moon back in the sky and their daughter but a girl. He and Sigmund his heir were the first to lay their swords at Queen Amalia's feet. When Amalia demanded a Pact of Steel and Fang to bound two disparate races together for the mutual survival of their races against an endless night, Sigmund of the Knoth bowed where his sire did not, and so birthed their clan anew in the Banrigh's graces.

While every other head in the head swayed with the _fili's_ song, lost in a past centuries dead, Caedmon could not be taken by the same thrall. With the hall preoccupied, he instead dug into courses to stave his starving belly. He cynically noted every instance of Knoth and Ruadhluan bound, no royal victory allowed without a strong south to bolster them.

He knew he and Amleth were a pact themselves made flesh just as everyone in the hall knew his... _the Rider_ was not.

Mailin potentially had centuries left of boot-licking before straying into controversial recent history. With his hunger sated Caedmon's thin patience frayed further. Soraid was not blind to his tensing.

She calmly caught Mailin's eye. Without letting the order disturb his song he gracefully wove the ballad to a close.

One by one the audience rose from their stupors. Their sighs and pleased smiles were all the confirmation a _fili_ of Mailin's standing needed of a song well-sung in heart and mind. A few languidly appraised the feast. The canny turned to their hostess.

Lady Soraid smiled serenely. "A fine conclusion to the evening, Mailin, that did the proud blood of my grandsons justice. How blessed are we that the blood of Triath Luan's heirs has been bolstered by earth and iron, to burn all the stronger in the nights to come."

Tension rippled through the hall as the lords and ladies took their leave, sparing only the bare minimum to hail their hostess and the royal guest of honor. Caedmon bore it with the stoicism drilled into him since boyhood.

To avoid gouging claws into the fine oak chair or distorting fine silverware, he kept his hands carefully folded on the table.

When the last of the crowd had gone Amleth's fine posture slackened with a sigh. He reached out for a bowl of grapes, the sweetest fruits of the south, and froze beneath their grandmother's warning blink. "Forgive me, grandmother. My appetite is still adjusting."

In human shape the great hall was cavernous. The dais on which they dined was his grandmother's throne in the shape of her birth. "We're all family, grandmother. Surely we can retire to somewhere more comfortable and free of... distractions?"

Loic opened his mouth to reply. His mother smoothly cut over him. "Dear Caedmon, I wish I could have been the grandmother you deserved, but certain pacts have made us born of different clans. No matter how much I wish we could lay our stations aside, we both know very well why I requested you here to my hall."

Caedmon scoffed. "Aye. You... _requested_ me here."

Soraid could order around her son and Amleth to her heart's content unless one actually managed the balls to challenge her for the lordship. She could never, ever call him home like an errant child. For all the whispers of the Righ's infirmity that originated from her halls, she would never dare defy his claim on their oldest grandson.

"For a matter unfortunately political, for all it involves our family," Loic sighed.

"Must we continue to dance around the bastard Rider?" Amleth cut in.

"No," Caedmon said flatly. "It's out of my hands as well."

"You hold your grandfather's ear like no other," Soraid said gently. "Give yourself credit as a loyal and capable heir who wants only what is best for his people."

"The Righ brooks no sedition," he replied pointedly. "More importantly, even he does not have the final say on the Rider."

Following his lead, the Knoths glanced upward, the Lord Moon was but a sliver of crescent. Even the Righ could only make an adoption of a one-soul informally, until the the final judgement had been rendered. In two weeks, their problem could very well solve itself.

"He already has a wild female bonded to him," Amleth drawled. "What is to say he can't slither his way past the Lord Moon too?"

"The Righ's sentimentality jeopardizes the rights of your children so long as he lives!" Loic snarled. "Take a stand, before that bastard truly counts as kin!"

Caedmon's claws sunk into the table as he stood. Splinters flew when he ripped them out.

"Forgive me," he ground out. "The flight was wearying and I'm afraid I must retire for the night."

"Of course, dear grandson," Soraid murmured gently as she speared Loic with one dark eye. "May you have pleasant rest."

Caedmon slept like the dead.

* * *

Eragon woke up sweltering. He tried his best worming out of Saphira's wing, but she had tucked it too firmly. She grumbled sleepily as he pulled his way free.

 _Little one, it's far too fucking late for this._

 _Sorry,_ he murmured blearily back. _Just hot._

The cool stone floor was a balm to his bare feet. Sweeter still was the cool night wind. Stepping fully out onto the balcony, he smiled as some of the heat dissipated into the salty air. Wiping the sweat from his head, he considered the moon, little more than a crescent.

 _Don't sleep out there,_ she grumbled. _You'd catch a chill._

Eragon returned to bed, but not without first dumping his head into the basin in the washroom. The icy water shocked, but it at least washed the sweat from his hair and made him miss the heat of dragonfire. As an afterthought he rinsed his mouth out too. Whatever was in that goblet left an aftertaste that came back at the oddest hours.

Sighing in contentment, he settled back at Saphira's side, leaning against her wing rather than beneath it. The last thing his body needed was getting caught in the oven again.

He drifted peacefully off without noticing the she-dragon's eye slide open. Humans were such cool little creatures. Even a temperature slightly above normal put them in mortal peril. Beneath her own inner fire she did not know his pain beyond a discomfort now dissipated. The lingering flush to his skin might be leftover from a dunk in cold water, or...

Saphira inhaled deeply. She smelled no telltale trace of sickness.

Resting her head on her paws, she concentrated on his deep breathing, and tried to drift off too.

She could not explain the shiver down her spine, but felt it all the same.

 **The Knoths are less a clan now then they are as powerful as their king, if not more so, as they have invested and gathered strength while the royal domains have been bled white by the Serpents over the last few decades or so. The power-hungry matriarch is Soraid, her bitter son Loic Beline's jilted husband, and younger grandson Amleth, the wise-ass who might get it all if Caedmon dies without heirs of his own. The Loic-Beline marriage was a master stroke on Soraid's and a concession by the Righ that should have united his throne with the strongest power in the Islands, ensuring what should have been an alliance that lasted centuries.**

 **Until Beline screwed up _big._ And then along came Eragon :D**

 **This story has a fair amount of favs and follows. I appreciate every reader guys, because an excited audience makes me more excited to continue. Even taking a minute to review to let me know what parts you appreciated or some thoughts on the story, or even just that you liked it, means the world to a writer.**


	11. Turning Tides

Eragon woke up late, mostly because Erna Suther and her maids invited themselves inside. Saphira growled, protectively placing herself between them. Erna only crossed her arms and stared firmly back. Beneath the firm gaze that must have quailed a dozen surly children into submission, the she-dragon hissed and sulked aside.

"Don't mind Saphira," Eragon rasped through a sore, aching throat. "She's never seen me sick before."

 _Durza nearly killed you! I certainly remember that!_

 _That was the work of a Shade,_ Eragon told her privately. _This is the work of an ordinary ailment._

Erna tutted, lifting a palm to his burning forehead. "A fever," she noted. "It will break on its own. We will handle the symptoms best we can. Perhaps with a tea to start with." Lillias dipped her head and bowed out.

"Should we inform Airmid?" another girl inquired quietly.

"No," Erna answered. "No need to bother the druid with something so... routine." Her honey gaze flicked to Eragon. "Airmid is... a healer, my prince. You know that word, yes?"

"Aye. Let's not bother her with something so trivial." The last thing Eragon needed was being poked and prodded at by a weredragon healer. It was an indignity he had escaped thus far. He rolled his stiff shoulders as he considered a necessary evil. "However, I could use another look the clothes already tailored for me."

Erna knowingly appraised the cuffs tight around his wrists, the hemline of a snug tunic barely touching his breeches. "Of course, my prince." She paused, before delicately stating, "Perhaps I should wait before taking new measurements. You might be only on the cusp of a growth spurt."

Eragon considered this. He was only sixteen. Roran and Uncle Garrow certainly showed how much growing might be left in him. Even Murtagh was proof a short stature had not been inherited from their gods damned father. Then he considered that the shortest of his serving girls looked him in the eye, and the tallest was above six feet. Oisin was at least six and a half.

"Humans do not grow so fast as daonna-arach," he pointed out ruefully. "I might gain only an inch at most."

Erna was quiet for a moment. "Perhaps you underestimate the strength of your blood, my prince," she murmured quietly.

"Perhaps," he allowed. _Or perhaps I have nothing better to do than grow and grow madder penned up in this room._

Saphira hummed in agreement. A gilded cell was still a cell. Eragon had given up hope of a rescue ages ago. Even if the scrying enchantments had been stripped from him and Saphira, the weredragons had escaped discovery for untold millennia. Who knew what sort of magics they had to hide them away from the wider world.

Eragon reluctantly conceded to wearing one of the silver tunics unaltered for his size. It still draped over his wrists and its broad shoulders pooled loosely at his collar, but not to the degree it had near a month before.

Breakfast was a simple affair. Saphira wolfed down only some simple roast sheep. A dragon's stomach could not handle the rich foods men and weredragons alike bolted down on a daily basis. They had learned the hard way for her those were luxuries sparely cherished. Eragon picked at his own mash and sausages halfheartedly.

Funny, his stomach had seemed a bottomless pit. Now at the smell of food it roiled like the sea. He settled for sipping a tea that at least soothed his throat. The flavor was not bitter, but had the same spice weredragons seemed to favor in all their drinks.

Not that Oisin was content to let a simple sickness waste their lesson. Rider and dragon alike groaned at the sight of him.

"Do I have the permission to dismiss you for the day?" Eragon asked flatly.

Their tutor sighed. "Unfortunately not, my prince. My will is the Righ's."

 _I'm quite well, Master Oisin,_ Saphira offered in a reverent tone last used for Glaedr and Oromis. _Eragon and I share a soul. Let me learn for the both of us today, so that I might pass on the knowledge in a manner easier for his aching head._

Oisin snorted a laugh. "Spare me the bullshit, child. Your prince and I have little need for it right now."

 _I'll always have time for your bullshit,_ Eragon sing-songed privately. He quirked at a grin at the she-dragon's indignant snort. Her brief annoyance was the first time in days she hadn't fussed over him like a mother hen. Aloud, he ventured, "This because we'll have tomorrow off anyway, aye?"

"Indeed, my prince," Oisin said, gold eyes blinking wide. "Tomorrow night is the Harvest Moon."

Eragon nodded, pleased at his deduction. Of course a people that dreaded the new moon reveled in the full moon. "Everyone is celebrating the harvest then?"

"All night long." Oisin's lips quirked in a wry smile. His pupils blinked, stunned at such levity from him. "Of course, most of us work the morning before. How blessed you are, my prince, for you and Saphira to be spared the whole day before one of the best nights of the year."

Saphira snorted. _Aye, we shall drink ourselves silly in here._

The weredragon's expression shuttered somewhat, returning to careful neutrality. "The Harvest Moon is a holy night. The Righ wills you both to enjoy it as free souls, with the understanding such grace lasts only the Lord Moon's full light."

What a wonderful time to come down with a fever. "Is our lesson about the calendar then?"

"No, my prince." Oisin folded his hands carefully. "This will be our last lesson... until after the full moon. And you are unwell. These first weeks have been trying to get you and Saphir as close to fluency as I can. Now is your chance to ask me what you wish. Within reason. I am but the _fili,_ something like a... _po-et."_ The last was in the tongue of man, slowly sounded out. "I cannot presume to speak for those above me."

Eragon mulled it over. He was still curious about the story that ended unresolved, how a whole race had been borne from a single daughter of the Moon. But more practical matters and his own pounding headache made him bluntly ask, "Saphira and I are sorely missed back home. No one will ever find us, will they?"

"Far worse than those like you have sought our Isles," Oisin replied grimly. "Our Will is too strong. Sea and sky strike down our mortal foes. You know full well what we guard here."

Neither dared out their doubts on the weredragon religion. Oisin proudly ignored the guilty gap in Saphira's open thought process.

 _For half-dragons, all I seem to see are your human halves,_ Saphira said at last.

Oisin's gaze flickered down. "We are in close quarters, child, and most of those in here on a daily basis mere servants. It is not their place to show such strength to you or crowd your presence so."

Eragon bristled. "Being human doesn't make me a cripple, Oisin. I know what I am and what I'm not. Don't hide your true face on my account."

Something lurked behind amber eyes, before they narrowed. "This is my _first_ face. I was humanborn."

Eragon's heart skipped. "How so?" he croaked.

"Humanborn or dragonborn," Oisin stated flatly. "A duine-arach can only be born one or the other. That does not make their second face any less true than their first. We are born duine-arach and die duine-arach."

They averted their gaze in guilty silence. _All the more reason I'd like to see your other face,_ Saphira murmured at last.

The duine-arach sighed. "If you wish."

They pressed to the edge of the bed to grant him respectful distance, but even by dragon proportions their chambers were grand. Oisin effortlessly flowed from gaunt scholar into a dragon with a head and neck sleek as a greyhound's. His scales were dusty brown, marred by scars to show even poets of these Isles held their own. Eragon's breath hitched at the effortlessness of such a transformation.

"This is why Prince Caedmon was with us on the Long Night," he blurted out. "He couldn't transform, could he?"

"Prince Caedmon could not, my prince," Oisin agreed, the Word as natural in his dragon's maw as it was his man's. "He was at the end of his _arachtide."_

Eragon frowned at two words he had never heard strung together before. "His... dragon-time?"

"Yes," sighed the duine-arach. "Our greatest strength is at times our weakness. We have two souls and they are not always in harmony. Sometimes the fire burns too bright to be banked. At other the water near smothers it entirely."

Saphira snorted, eyes wide in horror. _Is that what you consider sick?_

Oisin shrugged. "It is simply how the daonna-arach are. Our hearts are ever in flux, for such is the way of life. As the tide flows one way so too must it ebb. Most of the time, our harmony is in our disharmony. Until the pendulum swings too far and we must for it to swing round again."

Eragon blinked. "How often is that?"

"Oh, only half a moon's turn, give or take a few hours. Then you get around six moons of peace until the other half takes its due." Oisin cocked his head thoughtfully, and added, "Of course, there are exceptions. Adolescence can be a rough decade or so. Expecting and nursing mothers are to be revered as all such givers of new life should. And never, ever provoked."

Saphira hummed in sympathy. By dragon standards she was already mature, well over a year old. _When are daonna-arach fully grown?_

Oisin considered this. "The dragon half takes longer to catch up to the human. Both have reached full size by thirty or so, if one does not count the odd inch one might pick up over the decades."

All the more reason to be grateful Eragon was three quarters human. More so, if one counted his grandmother's human half. He was only sixteen! He couldn't even imagine living near twice as long to finally escape adolescence.

"What happens on the Harvest Moon?" he asked instead, if only to change the subject.

"Drinking, dancing, revelry, everything and more one would expect of a Bright Night." Oisin growled, paw flicking away from himself as if to ward off evil. "This is the last full moon before the equinox, when the Sky-Father loses balance over the day. It's one last chance to celebrate summer and all its fruits, lest one should never come again."

 _Gods damned weredragons and their superstitions,_ Saphira muttered privately. _Like I'd need such an excuse to drink myself dizzy one night a month._

Eragon fought hard to keep his face straight, so much so he nearly maced Oisin's tail twitch thoughtfully. "Perhaps there is a lesson I can teach you today," he mused slowly. "I can open my heart and mind, to show how to sing as a duine-arach should. I am the royal _fili,_ after all. I cannot disservice my prince and his bonded by not showing them what their people are capable of."

"Aye," Eragon agreed. "Please do."

Eragon settled against Saphira's paws, his soul transported away from the aches of his body as Oisin carried them both to lofty heights. He sang the crisp air of the Harvest Moon, and the summer warmth of its bonfires, their sparks floating free to dance among the stars. He sang of the giddy rush of alcohol that pushed dragons to daring new heights and then made even the best of them stumbling idiots. He sang a feast of the earth's fruits, and made Eragon's mouth water longingly for dishes he had never tasted, smell a smoky headiness that made his soul drift for endless hours.

When Oisin subsided, and Eragon eased back into himself, the sun was low on the horizon. He grumpily wiped at the sweat clinging to his brow, for his tunic was already soaked through. Saphira rumbled in concern.

"I'm fine, Saphira," Eragon croaked, rasping against his sore throat. He downed the pitcher of water Oisin pushed his way, before their lunch had been delivered and left uneaten in their hours away. _This is why one doesn't sit between dragons with a fever._

In moments, Oisin stood in his man shape, dipping his head in a bow. "I shall leave you to rest before Erna Suther comes in to attend to you. Rest well, my prince. You shall need it for tomorrow."

Eragon saw him off, before dragging himself into the bath. He submerged himself in steaming water. Aunt Marian had bundled him up when he sick to burn the fever out. Perhaps the same held true here. Saphira hovered over him. Eragon didn't have the heart to grumble he wasn't about to drown in a bathtub.

* * *

Beneath the Righ's silver fires even the strongest heart-steel should have melted. But the goblet was forged of star-steel, a gift of the heavens. It only blazed like a star in his flames, its runes shining white-hot.

Silver eyes bore into her soul. "It is done?"

Airmid bowed her head. "Aye, my Righ. The last night is up to him."

The Righ rumbled, turning to lick the bright red gash across his paw, to Will the wound shut himself. By morning there were not even be a scar left. This was not a mark to be borne with honor.

Airmid waited a few moments for the dangerous glow of the goblet to subside. She picked it up with scales and Will wreathing her hands, so the fire did not burn her too. She swallowed thickly as she sprinkled manbane to its contents, enough to poison a man or rouse even the most dormant dragon from its torpor.

Worse than the human poison was the goblet's contents; the Righ's literal claiming of his flesh and blood. His salty blood made earth and water, the heat of his flame fire and air. All four elements to claim a bastard great-grandchild no other could ever want.

The Righ did not Will the boy dead. He could have simply let those latent inner fires burn him from the inside out. It was his Will for Erna to do her damnedest to see the boy through his Lighting.

Let it not be said Airmid hadn't tried. Gormlaith, her mentor, was a century dead. Hers was the goblet, and hers the ritual that could see even a human changeling through the ritual.

Oisin Laoghaire stood as proof of that.

* * *

In the belly of Crown Castle, in quarters no noble ever dared if they could help it, a grizzled old guard took in the last contributions of a betting pool tasteless at best and outright treason at worst. Not that Agnar gave two fucks.

He bared his yellow fangs in a leer. "Well, captain? Have you finally come to make your bet?"

Brede slapped down her payment. "Five gold on the prince surviving. And... ten silver on blue." Beline and her mother had been such shades, once upon a time. Eragon had their eyes. Even Saphira was already blue, gods dammit. What other color could he possibly turn out to be?

Agnar whistled. "Quite a payout if he makes it."

She bared her teeth right back in a smile. "Of course he'll make it. He's not only a Ruadhluan, but my cousin to boot."

"What say you, Ciar?"

Ciar, the bastard, refused to change his original bet. Ten silver on the Lord Moon delivering a harsher judgement.

The kitchens fell into stunned silence as Oisin Laoghaire chose that next moment to stalk through. Brede's nose wrinkled at the sour stench of wine. Then every daonna-arach in the room fixated hungrily on him. No one knew Eragon like he did. His prediction might make or break every last bet made here tonight, and those yet to throw down their chance.

"Well, good _fili_?" Agnar called. "What song do you have for us?"

"No song. Not yet." Oisin's eyes blazed defiance as he set down his share. Even Brede, from a strong clan herself, gaped at the gold lay down. Even for a royal favorite that must have been well over a year's worth of income. "Only twenty gold on his survival."

"Mighty optimistic of you, Laoghaire."

Oisin shrugged. "I made it, didn't I? If not a lowly boy without a spark in his veins, why not a son whose blood sings of his heritage?"

Agnar frowned as he counted out the rest. "There's more than that here."

"Aye," Oisin drawled. "Or did you think neither set of parents taught me how to count?" More than one daonna-arach flinched. Usually the surviving changelings were not so... blatant in their origins. Brede held back her whistle at the balls the man grew when deep in his cups.

"We're betting on more than that, aren't we?"

"Oh, aye." The grizzled gatekeeper of the betting pool squinted in appraisal. "You'll be betting brown then, for the mud in the boy's blood? Considering... personal experience and all."

It was the favorite choice by far, above even 'flesh colored.' Because most daonna-arach had little imagination in their prejudice, save when the juicy odds of a dark horse proved too tempting to resist.

"What's the long shot?"

Agnar told him.

"Everything on that, then. The pure color."

Brede's jaw dropped. Ciar clamped down hard on his tongue, face swelling red as he near exploded on his laughter.

 _"W-W-Why?"_ a disbelieving spectator choked out at last.

Oisin smirked. "Because I want to roll in your gold, that's why. And because the little bastard will be everything and more that pisses you off, and that's the one color you'd all find more sacrilegious than white."

 **...My cover this story may not be the most accurate ; )**

 **Every duine-arach has that special time of the year twice over - roughly two weeks stranded in dragon form, and then in human. The exceptions are adolescents and expecting and nursing mothers, because surging hormones are a bitch, folks.**


	12. Ashes

_Finally, after what seemed like a lifetime, Eragon was at peace. There was no king's shadow looming over him, no lives of countless thrust upon his shoulders. he was young and innocent again, a boy on his uncle's farm. All that mattered was the warm earth beneath his bare toes, the distant crash of waves on the shore, and a quiet life well-lived._

 _He was not alone. He would never be alone again. His family had tilled this land before his birth. They had planted their roots long and deep. In this farm they'd been born, grew up and raised their families. They had never left it. At the end of the lives their bodies had been given to the earth, back into the arms of their Mother, to sleep eternally beside all those who came before._

 _Among them Eragon had a home. He always had. Garrow and Marian embraced him as a son and Roran as a brother. This was a dream that never ended and time held no dominion here. This is where he met the nephews and nieces yet to be born, the untold generations yet to spring from them. Here was his grandfather Cadoc, and his great-grandparents Gavin and Annah._

 _"Oh, my boy," Aunt Marian crooned. "My baby boy. Here you are home."_

 _Eragon frowned. Aunt Marian was the closest he had ever known to a mother, but-_

 _"We wove your flesh and blood and bone," Annah cooed. The arms of his great-grandmother were warm and soft, the embrace of the elders he had never known. "This was your cradle. It will be again, one day."  
_

 _"No, Mother," Cadoc murmured, eyes distant. "Not all of him."_

 _Garrow slung a protective arm over Eragon's shoulders. "She has no place here. She-"_

 _Reluctantly he drew away from his uncle. "Regardless of how she lived or who she loved, she is your blood too."_

 _Garrow stared at him long and hard, before squeezing his shoulder and drawing away. Eragon searched the sea of half-familiar faces for one like his own. Where was his mother?_

 _With stares and murmurs the crowd parted, drawing further and further away. Eragon flinched when even the warmth of Garrow and Marian deserted him. It was no woman that walked through them, but a wraith. Her hair was dull and colorless, skin stretched tight over her skull. Her eyes blazed bright blue within rings of bruises._

 _"Fuil mo fola,"_ _she murmured. "Ribadh mo lasair."_

 _The words should have been utterly alien, as strange as this soul. But Eragon knew her all the same. Her eyes were his own, though hers had the intensity of her father's. So too were their tongues now shared. Here was Beline, the rumored witch, daughter of none. Here was Beline Ruadhluan, disgraced daughter of dragons. Here was his grandmother.  
_

 ** _Blood of my blood. Spark of my flame._**

 _Eragon's instincts urged him backward, to shelter shoulder to shoulder with his true family. His heart kept him rooted to where he stood. He could no more deny the wraith before him than he could Saphira. She was just a part of him.  
_

 _"Fuil mo fola. Ribadh mo lasair."_

 _Sweat beaded down Eragon's brow as she advanced. If his family was warm, then Beline burned without remorse. Unconsciously he did step back, trying to retreat into the coolness. Beline closed the gap far faster. Up close he could see why his family had retreated so far into the dark. Her form was wreathed by a dragon's, pale and spectral._

 _Nails sharp as talons clamped down onto his shoulders. Eragon tried to flinch back, but Beline bore down with the weight of the sky._

 ** _"Fuil mo fola,"_** _she hissed, skeletal wings spreading wide as phantom sparks flew from her mouth. **"Ribadh mo lasair."**_

 _He screamed as her spark consumed him from the inside out. His farm and family burned away, until only her blazing eyes remained.  
_

 ** _ERAGON!_**

His eyes snapped open. The sun was a sliver on the horizon, Saphira's bulk drowning near all else out. It was morning. He was awake. The nightmare should have been over.

The fire had followed him. His blood boiled. His bones burned. His very heart had become an ember, throbbing against his chest until it seared through his flesh to freedom.

Eragon tried to speak Saphira's name. His scrambled mind could not even form the concept. All that escaped was an agonized howl. All he felt over and again was _stopstopgoodgodsmakeitSTOP-_

As he writhed and roared, he knew deep down his own great-grandfather had done this.

* * *

Her Rider burned with a heat that seared even her scales, made his flushed skin too hot to sweat. Saphira could do nothing but coil around him, as close and as far as she dared. Physical contact only made Eragon scream louder. His overwhelmed nerve endings shrieked across their link, too loud that even Saphira had to take a deep breath and take one mental step back. She could not save him if his agony swallowed her too.

 _ERNA!_ she bellowed. _OISIN!_

Neither answered her. Of course no one answered her, even if she roared out every weredragon's name she knew.

When Saphira could take the screams no more she paced their quarters like a caged animal. She rammed against a closed door and the invisible boundaries on the balcony, straining against an oath that could make her drop dead if defied. The weredragons going about their business averted their eyes like she was a bratty child, anyone's problem but their own.

With all other paths exhausted, Saphira resorted to the name Eragon dared think. _Ardanach Ruadhluan! Oathbreaker! Kinslayer! You kill your own child!_

No Righ answered her. But at last a mind tentatively knocked against her own. Saphira snapped at empty air, jaws smoking, as she threw open her fear and her fury to Erna Suther. _Peace, Saphira, peace. His path is beyond us now. It is the Lord Moon's judgement._

 _Your Righ poisoned his own great-grandchild! You should have executed us and be done with it! Eragon is... He's no..._

 _Blood calls to blood, and spark calls to flame,_ Erna answered solemnly. _The Righ could have claimed Eragon as clan or executed him as Rider. From then on today was inevitable. We have done all we can to bridge the gap between your bonded and his heritage. But still his heart and mind are human, for all blood burns. The Lord Moon does as he wills.  
_

 _No!_ Saphira snapped. _It is up to **Eragon!**_ _Shades and tyrants could not kill my Rider. He will not lose to himself!  
_

Vehemently she threw Erna from her mind and coiled once more around Eragon. Only for him did she open herself. She thought of calm summer skies and the warm dark of the egg, passing on whatever cold comforts she could. Eragon mindlessly latched onto her, his one focal point in the endless agony.

 _Little one,_ she murmured, _dearest one. You are bonded to me. I do not share my soul with a lesser man. You have flown and thrown your own fire. You will not succumb to your own blood. I forbid it._

Saphira could only gouge her claws into the stone floor and wait out endless hours. The only other option was to curl up and die beside him, and tht was no option at all. Eragon screamed out his voice for all his agony echoed across their bond. Carefully she meted out her strength when she could, whenever he faltered. He always tried to latch on a leech and drain them both, until she was forced to swat him down.

Around noon, when the sun outside blared hot and merciless, Saphira was shaken from her stupor by a crack. And then another. Eragon flailed with newfound desperation, eyes rolling into the back of his head.

His writhing mind surged against her own, seeking to abandon its crucible altogether. Saphira wanted nothing more to take him into her heart, to let him live on in the most intimate manner possible, without two separate bodies to divide them ever again.

But that was a fate no one deserved. Gently, ruthlessly, Saphira pushed him back down into the burning. This was still his body and his fire to face.

* * *

Oromis Thrandurin had rarely walked the waking world in weeks. He rose only to eat and drink, to exercise long enough to satisfy his concerned caretakers and Glaedr's rumblings. Conventional scrying had failed but their students were not dead. Captured by Galbatorix or another hostile power during an impulsive adventure, almost certainly. But not dead. His soul refused to believe the rebellion's last and greatest hopes had died died so unceremoniously, laid low by a storm or fickle chance.

Oromis had found Eragon once, in the ethereal realms between sleep and waking. He had reached across endless leagues to beat back a Shade's dying gasps of spite and granted his pupil new purpose. He would find him once more.

 _ **Oromis!**_

He woke, thrashing in his cot, soaked in sweat and tears. Familiar gold loomed over him. Instinctively Oromis latched on, weeping as he had not wept since Ilirea's annihilation. Glaedr leaned into him and keened with him.

Oromis cared nothing for his ruined home, for Glaedr had plowed through walls in his single-minded goal to reach him.

He thought of the split second he and Eragon had found each other at last, before that fire had burned him from the inside out.

Only hours later, when they had wrestled their grief down to the same dark pit where all their other nightmares simmered, did Oromis confirm what their souls already knew. By virtue of outliving every other legitimate bonded pair they were nominal heads of the Order. Vrael and Umaroth had rarely tapped into the deeper threads of the pact, for in their time the threads had been woven far and wide, a tapestry spanning hundreds.

Oromis plucked only two. Always there was Galbatorix, warped and wrong, at the edge of the loom with Shruikan's thread snared in his. So too were Murtagh Morzansson and his dragon, bound in spite and mutual desperation.

Nothing remained of the last true bond but ashes on their tongue.

Perhaps Saphira survived out there somewhere, a husk of herself as Brom had become.

Glaedr and Oromis prayed that was not so. Death was preferable to such emptiness.

* * *

Murtagh jerked awake, falling out of bed before he realized the flames weren't consuming _him_ alive. He was no stranger to nightmares. They had become especially vivid since his enslavement. His master was creative in his torture. For daring to let Eragon and Saphira escape the Burning Plains his oaths had not only become more choking, but his mind dragged away from his body in illusions of Galbatorix's whims, to break whatever spirit was left in him.

But this had been no nightmare. It was as vivid as the night Murtagh dreamed his mother dead in her fever, long before the servants had seen fit to announce it to him.

As a Rider he was never alone long in his thoughts. Within moments Thorn tentatively prowled at the edges of his mind. Reluctantly Murtagh let him in. For all that brat was responsible for their eternal imprisonment they were still all the other had.

 _Are... you... well?_

 _I'll live,_ he replied brusquely, ignoring the scrape of claws above his head. Galbatorix insisted on his quarters being beneath Urubaen's dragon-hold, so he and his dragon could be ready in moments if called.

His nails dug into the floor when all of Urubaen shook. From stories and stories below Shruikan bellowed with their master's outrage. He bit back a pained grunt when Galbatorix turned his wrath upon any and every around him. Fortunately the closest objects to punish were shelves and priceless books raided from the Fall, and not human servants.

Something wet dripped onto his knee. Murtagh wiped a hand over his face, expecting blood from the fall or the strain of his master's mind upon him. He blinked in utter bewilderment to find his eyes wet. He thought Galbatorix had scoured all the tears from him months ago.

No wonder Galbatorix raged so. Weeks of relentless searching had just gone up in smoke.

"My brother is dead," Murtagh murmured aloud, and found he spoke the truth. Eragon Morzansson was dead and his true name with him, consumed by some fire far and beyond any Imperial spies.

Murtagh fought down envy and rage, that Eragon had at least found a way behind his fate entirely. But never would Murtagh be again compelled to drag his little brother into bondage beside him. Never would Thorn be made a rapist or Saphira to mother monsters.

It was better this way, for everyone. Galbatorix could not afford to torture Murtagh or his dragon to death. They were indispensable now, with no she-dragons left to resurrect her race and the Riders beside them.

* * *

Tonight was a night of celebration, the last full moon when the day yet beat out the dark. Tonight was a night to glut oneself over the harvest and thanksgiving for a bountiful summer.

Caedmon had nothing to be thankful for. What should have been a day of rest and contemplation had become an exercise in blocking out one boy's dying screams as the magic Sparr and Amalia had wrought burned him from the inside out. He was reluctantly impressed the Rider had made it through the early morning and then to noon. As the afternoon dragged on now he only prayed for that suffering to _end._

Not that the crown prince could hide away as his bastard nephew succumbed to his righteous punishment for daring to ever be born, to take a dragon as bonded, to stumble into the lands of Beline's birth.

Caedmon did not budge from the feasting table. He nursed his beer in dark anticipation, downing one whenever the Rider's agonies especially needed drowning out. The servants thoughtfully replaced his dragon-sized tankard every time his grip turned Will-strengthened wood to froth and splinters.

His heart ached for Myrna's wings but of course his mate lead and treated in his stead. For all he reached out to her in his weakness she kept her heart walled off him, so his guilt would not claim her too. One of them had to remain strong for their people to show them they were both unbroken by a boy that had no true claim to their name.

Caedmon's lips twitched as he barely repressed a snarl at his uncle's family. Uncle Berach and Aunt Imke weren't the boy's direct blood. Their genial facades never faltered as daonna-arach from across Green Isle came to pay their respects and offer the tribute of their harvests, choice rams and cattle, bushels of wheat and barrels of beer. Niall laughed and jested with his friends as he always did. Caedmon imagined smugness there, that soon his cousin would soon be the uncontested Ruadhluan heir once again.

Above all loomed the Righ, stoic as the mountainside. He spoke not a word beyond what the rites demanded of him, not even to his brother. This Bright Night passed to him same as all others.

Most of all Caedmon watched the sun set into a sea of blood and the day bleed out into black. Miles away on Crown Isle the boy's suffering reached another depth to its hell and his she-dragon's stubborn calm neared its breaking point. Moonrise it would be after all.

As the first sliver of the full moon cleared the horizon, Caedmon clutched at his chest as a hammering heart stopped. He ground another tankard to splinters as his not-nephew died.

His involuntary keen ended as a questioning rumble at the aftermath. His aunt and uncle slumped against each other. Niall choked on his beer. The Righ's head swung toward Crown Castle.

There was no sudden hole in their hearts when the... boy descended into a darkness gentler, less permanent, than the long sleep. His she-dragon did not scream her grief or let herself go. Her fear slumped into exhausted relief as she followed him into sleep.

When the shock subsided Caedmon found a grin twitching at his snout. So the boy had survived out sheer spite. That was the truest family trait there was, as the Righ proved time and time again.

"A toast," he called at last. His tenth tankard was swiftly slid down the table. "To my nephew, Eragon Ruadhluan!"

Every eye turned to the Righ. His jaw parted to reveal the slightest bit of fang.

"To Prince Eragon!" Myrna seconded, for Uncle Berach's booming voice could not quite beat her to the punch.

"Eragon Ruadhluan!" the isle roared, as if loudness counted for sincerity.

 _"Homewards,"_ Oisin sang, high and exuberant, _"homewards, where summer's come and a new spark burns bright..."_

It was a song the Isles had not heard from the royal _fili_ in eighteen years, when Aunt Imke had been a healthy son at long last.

Caedmon turned his concentration inward, on family not often dwelt upon. He was disappointed but not surprised to discover Soraid hadn't the dignity to drop dead when Amleth passed on the good news.

 **Oisin's just happy he won his bet, not that the brats survived this or anything :p**


	13. Nascence

**It was a double update tonight, folks! FF doesn't always show that accordingly, so please check you read the last chapter too if coming back to this.**

When the last bones stopped grinding and scales bubbling, Saphira held her breath when Eragon at last slipped into blessed unconsciousness. It took only one sniff and sight of relief to confirm beneath all this unfamiliar bulk this was still her stone-head, no matter what this placed damn and its poisons had forced upon him. Even more reassuring was the beat of his heart, slow and deep and strong.

Utterly spent, Saphira collapsed atop him. Deliriously she realized how satisfied she was that Eragon was the pillow this time. Not since her first few weeks could she support herself without fear of crushing him.

Her sleep was deep and dreamless. She could have slept days. Instinct awoke her at the crack of dawn.

Saphira's eyes snapped open with a silent snarl. Beneath her Eragon snored in healthy slumber. Above them loomed the Righ's dark shadow from the balcony. She swallowed her hiss as his blazing eyes fell upon her like she was a worm beneath her shadow.

The Righ lowered his head and inhaled once, as if to confirm the stranger beneath her was indeed the great-grandson he had not quite succeeded in poisoning. Then he turned his back to them. He took off in three thunderous wing-beats. For all even the weredragon king was dwarfed by Glaedr's bulk he carried himself as if he were ten times larger. Eragon scarcely stirred through the clamor.

When the adrenaline from the encounter swiftly subsided Saphira was _still_ tired enough to sleep. She was just starting to drift off again when Erna Suther knocked.

Saphira snarled at the door but got up anyway, because her stomach growled even louder. She hadn't eaten at all yesterday and she knew Eragon must have been ten times as ravenous.

 _Wake up, little one,_ she murmured, nudging his head with hers. She cocked her head as something else came to her. _Er, perhaps that name no longer applies..._

* * *

Crown Castle's staff should have been returned and resting with their families on Green Isle, enjoying what remained of their holiday before duty called them back. The overwhelming majority crammed into quarters no noble would dare tread willingly. Some started lighting fires and making the first preparations for distant dinner, if only to have an excuse for their presence.

"Well?" Agnar growled. He was among overwhelming majority that had lost good coin and barter on the little shit surviving the Lord Moon's judgement, but there was still one last bet to pay out. "Is the little shit brown or not?" At Erna Suther's scolding snarl, he hastily amended, "Is the... little prince brown?"

"Of course not, you crass old fool," the woman sneered. "It's unbecoming of his bloodline."

"Blue, then?" a cook prompted hopefully.

One of Erna's girls quivered with suppressed excitement. And stilled when honey-gold eyes swept over her. "Unfortunately, no," she sighed at last. She smiled wanly at one serene _fili._ "Black, black as the night sky."

Black as King Arran and Prince Sioltach had been, gods rest their souls. Black as...

Oisin cackled as he counted his winnings. "I told you fools the little prince only lived to piss you off. There is only one we hold in greater regard than Amalia, and that is Triath Luan himself."

* * *

At first there was only burning. Then, just as he began to grow accustomed to his hell, his very bones betrayed him. They ached and scraped and broke as they had not had in all his growth spurts, as they had not had when he shattered his leg from skidding too sharply down that mountainside in one of his first hunts. His skin itched and burned worse than when rubbed raw from Saphira's scales.

Only distantly did Eragon realize the burning extended to parts down his spine and shoulder blades that had never existed before. The agony had come before the sudden deepness of his screams, the weight that pinned him down that became increasingly easy to throw off. There had been nothing left of him to consider the consequences after the pain finally ceased, only an eager acceptance of the wave of black that swallowed his watery eyes.

Saphira head nudged him. He grumbled at the familiar sensation and burrowed deeper into his arms.

 _Wake up, little one._ Her fondness suddenly veered into awkwardness. _Er, perhaps that name no longer applies..._

The oddness of it all was enough to finally make Eragon blink his eyes open. Immediately he hissed and snapped them shut. Never before had the light seared so bright.

Brow furrowing in confusion, he cracked them open once more. After the Blood-Oath Ceremony his vision had gained new precision, colors new crispness. But not even a Rider's eyes could detect every flick of shimmering quartz in the castle walls, every grain in his wooden wardrobe. Colors were still the same. Some had just gained new depth that made him dizzy when he realized those exact shades had never been conceivable to him before.

With a low groan he closed his eyes again. _What I fear happened actually happened, didn't it?_

 _...Aye, Eragon. It did._

 _Of fucking course it did,_ he growled. He had feared such not long after his blood had begun to boil. His thoughts had been confirmed by feverish recollections of colorless scales bubbling through his flesh and white bone arcing above his back. _The fucking Righ couldn't abide a human Rider as family any more than the elves could stand a cripple as their savior. I... I don't look like him, do I?_

 _...Not overly so._

With that lukewarm encouragement Eragon braved his new reality. Cracking his eyes once more he craned his head with unsettling dexterity to behold a bulk of shimmering black scales. It took him too long to realize that was _his_ bulk. Looking even vaguely like Shruikan was leagues beyond being stormy gray, or a shade of red anywhere near Thorn's or Zar'roc's.

Raising his head to his human height and then disconcertingly above it, he craned his neck to inspect his... paws. Hands? They had thumbs like the weredragons, not the back-curved claw of Saphira's. His pounding heart slowed somewhat at the shimmer of silver scales on the palm that should hold his _gedwey ignasia._ This was still his form, even one drudged forth from the bowels of his blood.

One inhale confirmed a hot breakfast waited outside their door, alongside scents a part of himself insisted belonged to Erna Suther and her more familiar girls. His stomach thundered.

Hunger and a stubborn blaze of pride were enough to make him strain against leaden legs to stand on all fours. They promptly buckled like a newborn foal's.

 _Should-_

 _Absolutely not!_ he spat back. _I will meet them standing like a ma- weredragon or else I will fucking starve._

With much snarling and mental swearing, he eventually managed to stand. He even held his own when Saphira at least cautiously inched away from him. Dizzily he noted he might match her size for her size, when he gained the strength to stand up straight. His damned wings and tail hung like dead weights, but at least he could glare down his snout when Saphira finally bid the servants enter.

They shuffled in like guilty dogs, averting their eyes and granting him deep, hasty bows before they fled. Eragon took dark pride in towering over the girls who had always stood above him even in human form. Only Erna Suther stood her ground long enough to cast her gaze respectfully up to him.

"I am joyful to see you standing tall and proud, my prince," she murmured. "Already you do your blood proud."

Eragon's only response was an impulsive growl he could not swallow. Erna did not flinch before she bowed low and deep before him.

No sooner did the door close behind them did Eragon just stop himself for lunging for the food. He glanced toward Saphira, licking guiltily at his sudden slaver. _You should probably eat first. I'll just have whatever's left._

The she-dragon rolled her eyes. _I've gone far longer than a day between hunts, stone-head. Please eat before your body starts digesting the hundreds of pounds it somehow put on last night.  
_

His attempt at etiquette politely declined, Eragon threw manners to the wind and did just that, ripping into breakfast with mouth and paws. He only slowed down after near swallowing a whole damn platter in his zeal. The last thing he needed was Erna picking wooden splinters out of his tongue.

When his belly was full to bursting Eragon considered the carnage left behind. Broth and juices dripped accusingly down his whole neck. Saphira stared neutrally on, emotions carefully closed to his. Nothing could disguise the fact it took all her effort to not burst out laughing.

 _I-I'm going to... clean up._

 _Of course, dear one._ At least Saphira spared his dignity by not asking him if he needed help to the washroom.

On heavy, unsteady legs he hobbled to the basin. After stepping on his own wing and getting his tail stuck on the corner, he finally made it. Too late did he remember the room contained a shimmering wall for reflections of any size. Frantically he avoided the monster in the mirror.

His first hysterical impulse screamed for human form, _his_ face and _his_ hands. But Eragon shuddered in dread at ever undergoing that torture again, no matter the end result. At least not so soon after surviving the first.

 _You're being an idiot,_ he told himself. _If you can't face your own fucking reflection how can you hope to face the gods damned Righ, gods damned Galbatorix?_

Before he lost his nerve Eragon forced himself to face the mirror. Shock riveted him there.

This was not the vague unease he felt when first discovering the alterations the pact was making to his body or his initial horror to discover elven sharpness imposed upon his face. Somehow this reflection was both better and worst; it was near totally alien, and so without the horror of identifiable features twisted just enough to be alien.

He _did_ vaguely recognize the Righ in the strength of his snout, the broadness to his shoulders. He thanked gods the lack of scarring and stoic disdain brought Caedmon and his seething fury more to mind. He had fewer horns, not as gnarled, smooth and silver as crescent moons. His scales were black, but not an inky shade like Ciar's. The morning sunlight gave them a bluish cast, especially through the membranes of the one wing he twitched up, like a midnight sky.

Eragon sighed to discover at least his eyes were unchanged, still their familiar blue. A blue that now reminded him of Beline and her burning hands.

Then he blinked to discover one detail was not quite right.

 _Saphira!_

 _Aye, Eragon?_

 _Aren't weredragons supposed to have round pupils?_

 _Ordinarily. Unless they're still in their... arach..._

 _Arachtide,_ he finished faintly, staring at his own slitted eyes. And the prospect of being stranded in this form for two damned weeks.

Eragon stuck his head into the basin of freezing water to stifle his exasperated scream. And startled with a undignified yelp at the steaming cloud of bubbles he let out instead. The water still steamed when he scrambled back.

At least his fire worked.

He returned to the main chamber to discover Saphira had picked the last of the trays clean and neatly stacked them by the door. Their quarters were still grand in size but not nearly as cavernous as two dragons sharing the space.

 _How do you feel?_

 _A bit better,_ he answered earnestly. _Though still very pissed at my excuse of a family. And the prospect of being stuck like this for two weeks.  
_

Her eyes narrowed. _Oh, aye, because being even being partially one of the strongest creatures alive, with flight and flame at your every whim, is such a terrible ate.  
_

Eragon huffed a laugh. _True enough. I could have been born to a family of wererats._

After an expected pause, Saphira prompted, _How **else** do you feel?_

 _Still tired,_ he admitted sheepishly.

 _Good._ She promptly collapsed onto the feather bed. So _am I. Oisin can stuff his lessons if he thinks I'm up to them today._

Some lingering sense of propriety made Eragon's gaze stray to the balcony even as the she-dragon bore expectant holes into his soul. It mostly his own lingering soreness that made him limp onto heavenly softness too. He awkwardly settled at the edge of the room. It only gave him nowhere to flee when she settled stubbornly beside him.

His past day as a we-... duine-arach passed fast asleep, save when Erna stopped by with food enough to feed two growing dragons. After lunch Eragon realized resistance was futile and stopped trying to slither away from Saphira's side.

He had damn near gotten them both killed in so blindly accepting the Righ's poison night after night, in corrupting himself from the inside out. The least he could do was make the other half of his soul feel the slightest bit more at ease, that no more nightmares could steal him from her.

 **Eragon WAS gonna be blue originally. That's why Beline and Brede are both blue - because he would have taken more after the Standa side of the family. He causes a lot more headaches this way :p  
**


End file.
